How to make your text look futuristic (2016) • Hacker News Board

ako wrote: post #51

swiftcoder wrote: post #50

I love just how dated some of these futuristic fonts now seem, having grown up with most of them

Yes brings me back to the 80s demo scene…

Not only that, this article had the same feel of an old ANSI scene graffiti tutorial (I think it was made by the ACiD team

Re: How to make your text look futuristic (2016)

#54

Post by jottinger » Wed, May 13, 2026, 11:41 AM UTC

OMG I died laughing at this. Then I came back to life. And died again.

Re: How to make your text look futuristic (2016)

#55

Post by giancarlostoro » Wed, May 13, 2026, 12:44 PM UTC

bit_savager wrote: post #21

giancarlostoro wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might have to snag it, and like you say, keep it laying around as a coffee table book somewhere. :)

"Somewhere"

Probably my bookshelf lol

Re: How to make your text look futuristic (2016)

#56

Post by Archelaos » Wed, May 13, 2026, 12:58 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #52

Some of this is based on the 1966 Star Trek logo: https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series

Raumpatrouille Orion also from 1966 used a similar font style:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raumpatrouille_%E2%80%93_Die_p...

I reckon this style originated much earlier from the fonts used on the covers of science fiction books and magazines.

Re: How to make your text look futuristic (2016)

#57

Post by nedt » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

But Star Wars isn't from the future. Does that mean there is a time loop in fonts?

Re: How to make your text look futuristic (2016)

#58

Post by canes123456 » Wed, May 13, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

socalgal2 wrote: post #35

Does the Back To The Future logo really count? Raiders of the Lost Ark as a very similar style but does not evoke "future". Yes, there are subtle differences. My point is, if you divorced them from the connection to their content I think it would be hard to point to one as "future" and the other as "not future"

The typeface could not be more different between the two. One is a sans serif font with many of the factors the author called out. The other calls back to hand illustration and comics IMO.

What is the same is the color scheme and gradient. This likely is more about what was in style at the time for movie posters. You can also justify this is representive of the past part of back to the future.