Forbidden Type of Dank Mansion is a blast from the art deco past! A long-gone age of reason and logic, a simpler time when neighborly was the thing to be! A time without stress or strife, when we were all brothers and sisters and comics were groovy, man… The 1970's!
Wait, what? Yes, the 1970's deco revival, or rather, re-revival. Ever since the Sixties, art deco lettering has made a comeback every ten years or so, and when we ran across the inspiration for this typeface, we thought we'd get in on the ground floor of the next deco revival before it got too crowded… oops… too late.
Anyway, we ran across an old comic book in our closet, hidden underneath that heavy briefcase that our buddy DB Cooper asked us to hold for him. It was a copy of Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, a gothic anthology book put out by National Periodicals. [You may know them as DC Comics!] Oh, the nine-year-old joy that cover brought back to us! Huddling under the covers with a flashlight late at night and trying to figure out why National thought that deco lettering was perfect for spooky comic book logos. We still really don't get it, but we do still love the letters!
They really stood out on the spinner rack back then, when most funnybooks sported bespoke, hand-lettered logos, here was this unfathomable monstrosity that looked as if someone grabbed the nearsest sheet of Letraset dry-transfer letters they could find and knocked this logo out before their coffee was finished! Variants of the same letter were on display as well, making the logo something of a Frankenstein. Perhaps that was the reason it was on a gothic horror comic? Who knows?!
Overall, the characters have a Herbert Bayer Bauhaus-y feeling, but that's about as close as they came. Regardless, we figured, "Hey, here's half the alphabet… how hard could it be to infer the rest?" Well, not very hard at all! We made a few slight fixes, added a whole bunch of punctuation, acccents, and a few European glyphs and voila… Forbidden Type of Dank Mansion! A modern re-imagining of a retro re-interpretation of a vintage modern typeface!
So what's in the package? Well, folks, we're glad you asked! You get the typeface in TTF and OT flavors, plus a spiffy little PDF specimen book chock full of the ridiculous irreverence you've come to expect from Category4, including a sneak preview of a retro comic book titling typeface that's waiting in the wings! But if you're still on the fence about Forbidden Type of Dank Mansion, you can head over to https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1976824 and take a gander at the specimen book. Browse online, download a free PDF, or even buy a solid print copy for less scratch than a decent sandwich! You can't beat a deal like that!
That's it for now, folks! Hopefully we'll see you in a month for the release of another face! Until then, have fun, be nice, and remember: At Category4, things could be worse!
Download now