An amazing logo design: the Princess Bride DVD
Sunday / 08.17.08 / 12:23AM / Joe / comments: 4
I know this came out late last year and everybody else has probably already noticed this, but the logo work on the 20th Anniversary DVD of The Princess Bride is nothing short of astounding.
It's "Princess Bride" written so it can be read both normally and upside down. And it is completely legible! There are no shortcuts; no tricks. The font work is identical on both halves. To make these images, I simply rotated the original in Photoshop. The worst you can say is that the "br" is slightly open and weak. But that's being picky.
 
As I'm sure everybody does, I stood at the Target endcap today and marveled at this, turning the DVD over and over again.
Whoever designed that should be given a Pulitzer. In fact, take a Pulitzer away from someone else and give it to that person. | 
As both a fan of an immensely quotable movie, as well as being a graphic design sort, I'd have to say that this is excellent typography. If you've got a text logo that can read identically from more than one direction, that's impressive. "The Edge" now defunct, live music club The Edge had a logo as such (http://daily.stanford.edu/image/preview/3826?x=225) as well as SUN Microsystems. Although the rather willowy turns of this DVD's text logo are really impressive as you can actually read the text properly without having to look at it again. It's so natural that most wouldn't even know it was invertible if it weren't for the extra "the" and the inverted art on the other half of the box.
BTW, have you yet tried making Westley in his "man in black" guise in SCIV? He's the easiest character to make in SCIII, so I was thinking that that might be the case in SCIV—plus all your geeky friends get a kick out of it (well that and making Prince Adam of the Masters of the Universe franchise—personally wasn't a fan of that one, but certain disciplines kind of suggest certain characters).
I really don't hold any love for the film, but that logo work is stellar.
If you can make Prince Adam, you can make Fakir! Nice.
In SCIII the Gladiator discipline had a move where the character would point their sword at the sky and lightning would come down. Combine this with that pageboy he had and it would seem all too easy to create that character.
Anyway, I forgot to mention that this type of design is called an ambigram.