-by Andy Dudas 6/11/2020
I have loved fonts for as long as I can remember. There’s something about the compound curves of an ‘S,’ the balance of a capitol ‘H,’ and the equal parts round and square of a ‘5’ of which I cannot get enough. I suppose this affinity for numbers and letters is attached to learning to read and write. Virtually everything in our lives is based off our ability to create and comprehend those characters.
Sports was a great place to absorb fonts. The logos, the jerseys, the fields, and the courts were all covered in colorful and unique letters and numbers. The simplicity of the Cleveland Browns font logo, the interlocking ‘I’ and U’ of Indiana University and the ‘N’ ‘D’ of Notre Dame(I grew up in Indiana and was born in Ohio). And even though I was a fan of the Big Red Machine, the intertwined logos of the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals fascinated me from the moment I saw them. 
As I’ve grown older, sports doesn’t nearly as often hold my attention. I watched a lot of movies as a kid. Some over and over and over. Between ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’ ‘Spaceballs,’ ‘The Princess Bride,’ and ‘Star Wars,’ I’m pretty close to being able to recite those word for word as they play. I’m a kid who grew up on VHS. Movies became my thing for a long time. It’s not that uncommon for someone from my generation to be a movie nerd I know, but all I know is what I like. I like movies and I like fonts: what better way to combine those two loves than with movie posters.
The images that follow are to the best of my ability to redraw the first letter of the name of a film from the original movie poster when it was released. Not the DVD/Netflix cover art that a lot of us have come to know some of these movie titles. A great example would be Star Wars, not “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” It was released as plain ol’ Star Wars. The iconic Star Wars font logo was not on the original poster. Doing my research as diligently as I could, there are still two other versions of this logo.
I Googled “movies that start with the letter _” and went from there. There were some films with so many multiple versions of posters that I wasn’t able to confirm which was the original at the time of release or even in some cases a pre-release poster. The intent was to find the originals.
So this is by no means meant to be seen as a completely accurate list. It’s as accurate as I can make it. I was drawn to some that were simple and some that were elaborate. The films themselves are not being judged in any way. There are some of the best films of all time on this list and some of which I’d never even heard and a whole lot of stuff in between.
The letters appear here in the same orientation as they did on the original posters.
A few things I learned along the way: I should’ve expected to find very few movies start with the letters Q, X, Y and Z. The R on posters for Rockys I and II stayed the same but each subsequent Rocky used a different R. Star Trek films with the cast from TOS used the same S for the first three films but a slightly different S for their final three. Films with TNG cast alternated between a wide and narrow version of the same S in their four films. The J. J. Abrams Star Trek reboot brought back the font from TOS. And there are way more Muppet movies than I realized.
Andy has interests varying from painting and singing, to photography and prop making. Pretty much anything that has a creative element. Amateur status in all endeavors, he finds art everywhere he looks. Always seeking his next inspiration.
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