How Futu­ra became Gas­par Noé’s go-to typeface

In 1927, a book design­er named Paul Ren­ner cre­at­ed a type­face that trav­elled in time and space, from hum­ble Ger­man begin­nings, through rock­et-fuelled adven­tures and now to punc­tu­at­ing dance beats in Gas­par Noé’s lat­est film, Cli­max.

Caught between a taught reli­gious upbring­ing and the birth of the Bauhaus, Renner’s faith in fonts lay between beau­ty and func­tion. When he released his defin­ing work in the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry, it was a mod­ernist tri­umph that print­ed the world in sharp lines and mes­mer­ic cir­cles. It was banned and then cham­pi­oned by the Nazis; it defined polit­i­cal races for both Nixon and JFK (in the same year); it sold you train­ers from Nike; it changed the word ​‘lemon’ for­ev­er when Volk­swa­gen used it.

And it didn’t just tra­verse the galaxy by adver­tis­ing 2001: A Space Odyssey – it actu­al­ly went there, used by NASA on the Apol­lo 11 lunar plaque that still adorns the moon sur­face today. It drove graph­ic design work through­out the 20^th cen­tu­ry, and still remains the designer’s sharpest tool for typ­ing the cut­ting edge. On release, the Bauer type foundry called it ​“the type of today and tomor­row”, 90 years lat­er and it’s still both. Then, and now, it’s Futura.

Futu­ra was to be a revolt against the con­densed types of sign­mak­ing – eco­nom­i­cal­ly designed fonts that were built for adver­tis­ing – Renner’s was for the read­er, who could unknow­ing­ly rev­el in its calm­ing for­ward­ness. Three years after Futura’s pub­li­ca­tion, Futu­ra Extra Bold Con­densed – a punchy, dense and nar­row­er alter­nate – was released. In con­trast to Renner’s orig­i­nal vision, it was a font that would become a tat­too of sig­nage and adver­tise­ment, and the go-to type of art­house provo­ca­teur Noé.

Any Wes Ander­son film will tell you that the man loves Futu­ra. In The Roy­al Tenen­baums, not only is it the film’s title card, but a bold vari­ant of it is the font of the Tenenbaum’s entire uni­verse. In Wes’ world, book cov­ers, school bus­es and recov­ery rooms are all adorned with it. These eru­dite fan­tasias, per­fect­ly sym­met­ri­cal, har­mo­nious­ly pho­tographed and designed – they’re built to envel­op you in a new world, but they are so exten­sive­ly planned, every frame also reveals the craft behind its cre­ation. Beau­ty and function.

Noé’s worlds how­ev­er, are not so invit­ing. Although the craft on show may be as immac­u­late­ly planned, they are not places one may have been yearn­ing for an invi­ta­tion to, but curios­i­ty makes it tough to ignore the RSVP. Relent­less, brash but so often tech­ni­cal­ly astound­ing, from his first notes to the final script, a Noé film feels writ­ten in cap­i­tal let­ters – and for him, fast read­ing, extra bold ones are best.

Futu­ra Extra Bold Con­densed might shout you down, but it doesn’t com­plete­ly escape the curves and lines of its lin­eage – under­neath the loud voice are tones of pio­neer­ing assur­ance. It’s that tone that led Extra Bold Con­densed to its most recog­nis­able cham­pi­on, Nike. Cel­e­brat­ing its 30^th year this year, the ​‘Just Do It’ cam­paign emanates that mes­sage, to the point that any phrase in the font could be placed next to a swoosh logo and it will read ​‘Just Do It’ with­out even hav­ing to say the words.

It’s this same feel­ing of pow­er mixed with pro­gres­sion that suits Extra Bold Con­densed to aware­ness move­ments and top­ics, from Stonewall’s ​‘Get Over It’ cam­paign to the cov­er of Reni Eddo-Lodge ​‘Why I’m No Longer Talk­ing to White Peo­ple About Race’. It’s this stand-up-and-take-note feel­ing that no doubt attracts Noé to it. You’ll find it on posters for I Stand Alone, in the psy­chotrop­ic type foundry titles of Enter the Void and you’ll also find it in Climax.

Set dur­ing a chaot­ic LSD spiked after-par­ty for a dance troupe, Noé almost seems to acknowl­edge the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of his favourite type. Slo­gans like ​“A French Movie and Proud of It” and ​“Death is a Unique Oppor­tu­ni­ty” are punched across the screen, but com­bined with a corkscrew­ing cam­era, some hyp­not­ic dancers and a house music sound­track, inten­tion­al­ly or not – and with high style stakes and low nar­ra­tive ones – they read more like slo­gans in search of a product.

In 1992, ​‘Just Do It’ was four years old and Abso­lut Vod­ka had been spend­ing just over a decade try­ing to break into Amer­i­ca with its alter­nate pop-art takes to its Extra Bold Con­densed bot­tle. Noé hadn’t com­plete­ly hyp­no­tised the art­house world just yet – his first film, Carne, had only just been released – but some art direc­tors in Amer­i­ca knew that there was anoth­er high-pro­file user of their least favourite font on the horizon.

They’d had enough of this par­tic­u­lar Futu­ra vari­ant, and released an advert call­ing for the boy­cott of Futu­ra Extra Bold Con­densed. They called for the destruc­tion of ​“the Great Satan of clich­es and the Lit­tle Satan of naked con­ve­nience”. In the 26 years since, though, Futu­ra Extra Bold Con­densed has proven that it’s not going any­where – and whether Great or Lit­tle, Noé is prob­a­bly hap­py being a Satan too.