Concrete Salsa
The two Concrete Salsa fonts were inspired by a hand-lettered Film Noir poster from the 1950s from a movie called “Coup Manqué” which was the French version of “The Killing”. It was one of the earliest films in which Stanley Kubrick was a young producer. The original poster was designed with the typical dynamic and energetic graphics from the 1950s Film Noir genre with strong contrast and dramatic compositions.
As with all my typeface designs that were inpsired by hand-lettering, I started by recreating the letters that appear in the words Coup Manqué and then designed the rest of the font to match. I loved the chunky design of the letterforms enhanced by the little notches cut out in them that resemble rough hewn stone. This is what inspired the name “Concrete Salsa”…it had both the feeling of an industrial quarry look mixed with some South of the Border flair.
I love typefaces that can straddle two or more design genres like that…it makes them more versatile and they have less of a tendency to become overused in a specific style.
In this fun example below, I utilized the typeface for a mock ad for a Mexican restaurant. It seems to fit as perfectly here as it does in the movie poster of a murder mystery.
There are actually two faces to Concrete Salsa, labeled One and Two. The difference between them lies in the placement of the cutout notches in the letters. This allows a designer to intermix them for a more organic feel…more like the way hand drawn letters would be.
Designed in 2008, Concrete Salsa is part of the Jukebox library and is available from Veer…now in OpenType format.
No comments:
Post a Comment