From Caesar Monuments to Movie Posters
November 15, 2012 by btylr | Comments Off on From Caesar Monuments to Movie Posters
In 2007, the Library digitized two original, loaned rubbings of the inscription from Trajan’s Column (c. AD 113), to facilitate a reproduction request of the Rare Book School’s then Program Director Ryan L. Roth. The rubbings had been made by Edward Catich in 1970, and are now owned by Sheila Waters. Because of their size (two ~9-foot-wide thin-paper sheets), these were digitized in three overlapping shots per sheet, atop a white background, and then digitally merged together to create the final images.
Catich’s rubbing of Trajan’s Column’s inscription.
Catich’s research and speculation on Trajan’s Column’s lettering in turn influenced the creation of the now-popular digital font Trajan, first released as a PostScript font in 1989 (designed by Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems).
Top row: detail from Catich’s rubbing; bottom row: matching letters from the digital typeface.
Ever since, starting in the early 1990s, and often as an affront to many graphic designers’ sensibilities, the Trajan font has been featured on an inordinately high percentage of American movie posters — even to the extent that the Roman lettering style is now associated with both Japanese Samurais and Egyptian mummies.
Trajan in The Last Samurai
Trajan in The Mummy