I love the art direction of the HP movies. I don't rate the films at all, but I do watch OotP with the sound off and it is just marvellous, like sandwiches and circus posters and happiness and chocolate. I don't think it's very interesting, fannishly speaking, to 'blindly' reproduce the movies' visual interpretation of the Potter world, but I think it's interesting to understand how they've gone about things, and steal their best ideas.
- The Typography of Harry Potter @perezfox
- Harry Potter and The Enchanted Letterforms by Jessica Helfand @designobserver
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Typography Slideshow by Jon Hicks @flickr
Playbills and Papers
Notice the mixed, slabby fonts and centered text of the playbills, and the cramped newspaper columns that stretch away down ludicrously long pages.
- A Victorian Circus Poster @ the British Library
- Playbill Collection @ The National Museum for the Performing Arts (V&A)
- Slave Life (poster) London Adelphi 1852
- My Jack (poster) 1890
- European News Papers @ Mitchell Archives
- The Times 1796
- New York Tribune (American but still useful)
- Victorian Periodicals a small collection @ t'BL
- A digital library of 18th and 19th Century journals @ Bodleian Libraries
Font Palette
For Potter, I have a palette of about 30 fonts; it comprises some historical book fonts, and a stylised 'archaic' book called Dancing Super Serif, a few blackletters, some Edwardian signage by Paul Lloyd, some Victorian circusy slab serifs, a classic Egyptian with a lovely rounded 'R', a lighter slab serif from HPLOS, and their block display font Headline as well. That, some handwriting fonts, a couple of decorative initials set, and a fifties packaging font that's like a dancing Impact, make up a good palette with which I can build my own Potter world.
I'll do individual posts on these sets eventually, but here's my Potter free font set, drawn from these larger categories.
- Display Sans
- Sans Thirteen Black by Manfred Klein
- Headline (maj.) by HPLHS
- Grungey Display
- Coperniq (maj.) by Unknown
- Dancing Super Serif by Manfred Klein
- Poster Types by Manfred Klein
- Blackletter
- Olde English by Dieter Steffman
- Cantebriggia by Paul Lloyd
- The Art of Illuminating (min.) by Staffan Vilcans
- Book, Historical
- IM Fell English Pro by Igino Marini
- Late Victorian/ Early Edwardian Signage (maj.)
- Bicycle by Daniel Gauthier
-
by Paul Lloyd
- Slab Serif
- Cairo by Unknown
- Slab Serif (thin) by HPLHS
- Round Slab Serif (thin) by Manfred Klein
- Circus/Playbill (SS)
- Belshaw by Dieter Stefferman
- Show Boat (maj.) by David Rakowski
- Plastische Plakat Antiqua (maj.) by Dieter Steffman
- Handwriting
- Henry Morgan Hand by Paul Lloyd
- Jane Austen by Pia Frauss
- TrashHand (maj.) by Luce Averous
- Fifties
- Kitty Katt by Dennis Ludlow
- Dingbats
- WM Designs type ornaments by Karla
Colour Palette
I keep an actual palette of colours in my Photoshop, as a quick reference to start from.
- Download
Potter.acotoApplications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Colour Swatches - In Photoshop, select
Windows > Swatches - Click the triangle in the top right of the Swatches window and load (
Load Swatches) the Potter swatch fromApplications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Colour Swatches
Textures
Texture is important in fandesign to get that tactile, noisy realness in an image that makes it alive, concrete, as an object instead of a sterile grouping of pixels on a screen full of same. Even a simple paper texture multiplied over a composition makes a huge difference.
Some stars from the /paper folder in my stock collection:
- #007 keywords: 'paper brown cardboard parchment' by themabina @ imageafter
- #005 keywords: 'paper brown cardboard parchment' by themabina @ imageafter
- #190 keywords: 'paper brown black' by themabina @ imageafter
- #025 keywords: 'fabrics paper wrinkled white' by themabina @ imageafter
- #028 keywords: 'paper texture old fabrics book objects beige fiber fibers' by themabina @ imageafter
- #903 keywords: 'fabrics texture paper old pages ragged torn edges' by tabus @ imageafter
- #093 keywords: 'fabrics texture paper old' by unknown @ imageafter
- The Anatomy of a *Really* Old Book by bittbox
Brushes
I don't really go in for a lot of the brush sets that are available online; they're often simple stamps that would do much better as stock photographs or shapes, IMO. But I do love David Nagel's brushes and have painstakingly downloaded them allomgmarryme.
But that's for another post; for now, some general brushery—realistic paint, pencils, chalk and ink for signs, schoolbooks, blackboards and so forth:
- Nagel Series 40 15 watercolor and other wet brushes by Dave Nagel
- Nagel Series 33 20 chalk, charcoal and graphite brushes by Dave Nagel
- Pencil Tool Preset by doodlebrain
