Welcome back to a long-awaited Designerland Typography Case Study. As promised, this week we're looking at the amazing typography used on Main Street U.S.A. Main Street is a typographer’s paradise full of amazing vintage display fonts. In fact, Main Street is the one place within the Kingdom that is most saturated with typography—you could spend hours if not days trying to document all the fonts within this land. This is too much content for just one case study, so we’ll look at the typography through a three part series.
Most of the fonts used on Main Street are display fonts, which are decorative in nature and used for logo design. In this case, most appear in logos for the various storefront businesses that call Main Street U.S.A. home. These display fonts include Victorian, Script, Tuscan, Latin, Slab Serifs, Serifs, Edwardian, Ornamental, and so on, but you won't find any sans serif fonts in this section of the Magic Kingdom. Through the process of locating these fonts, I found that the display fonts, while vintage in nature, actually come from type foundries from the 1950s, and some even come from foundries from today.
This large variety in typography is another layer that helps the thematic atmosphere, and Disney Designers do it well. As of late, designers have taken a keen interest in one particular type foundry, and this brand of ornate, vintage type not only appears on Main Street, but also in the new Fantasyland expansion. So the next time you stroll down the street on your way to the hub stop, this typography is sure to catch your eye. Well that about does it for this week’s post—tune in next week for a new Retro '71 shirt concept. Have a greet week and see you all soon.
