Kidnap the Magic: The Art of the Disneyland Font (Part 1)

I've been wanting to do a post about fonts for quite a while. They're such amazing bits of software—negligible in size, easy and quick to install, and then you can open any word-processing program on your computer and type fancy letters! Or even pictures! Just type them!

Why now? Firstly, why not now? Secondly, the holiday season typically involves greeting cards and party invitations, and the creative among us might like to design our own instead of buying pre-made ones. And supposing your party and/or greetings are Disneyland themed? Hopefully, you will find this brief guide enlightening.

There are thousands upon thousands of individual fonts available for completely free download online. The really high-quality ones cost money, but unless you're looking to do professional-grade work, freeware usually suffices. A simple Google search for “Disney fonts” yields good results if your primary interest is films and characters—and there's certainly enough of that to go around in the theme parks—but “Disneyland fonts” is a less fruitful endeavor.* A few specialist websites such as The Disney Experience and Mickey Avenue are invaluable, but the fact remains that you're almost more likely to stumble across an incredible gem while browsing through a massive general archive, than searching for one specifically.

The long and the short of it is that only a handful of lettering styles specific to Disneyland attractions (or best known in that context) have been created as fonts for general use by the public. But most of the park signage actually uses pre-existing typefaces, many of which have been adapted into freeware versions.** This is where the aforementioned Mickey Avenue really shines. And when it comes to bringing across the atmosphere of a given land or attraction, it’s more about the type of lettering you use.

Thousands upon thousands. This is going to be fun.

I know: You want to start with the Disneyland logo font itself. The good version, by typographer and Actual Disneyland Fan David Occhino, is called Kingdom, and it is not freeware. But it's not all that expensive, as really slick-looking, specific fonts go, and if you spring for it you'll be supporting a fellow fan.

Of course, if you're broke, there's a less-good free version called, heartwarmingly, Started By A Mouse. If it's the slightly frillier vintage logo you're out to recreate, Orange Grove is the one to download.

Notable lettering on Main Street seems to come in two main flavors: squat serifed “official” looking letters (such as the signage on the Main Street Opera House), and whimsical Art Nouveau letters. The second flavor is by far the more interesting of the two…but you don’t want to make it too interesting, if you’re evoking Main Street. Stick with very readily legible characters, not dominated by whatever little flourishes are included. My favorite “Main Street-esque” font of this sort is Acadian. To the best of my knowledge this specific lettering style is not used on Main Street or anywhere else in the park, but those little curlicues and double lines are common in Art Nouveau fonts, and the light lines give it a summery vibe that fits with Main Street's eternal Fourth of July and open-air cafés.

When looking for picture or “dingbat” fonts to illustrate Main Street, seek out late Victorian/Edwardian imagery. I find this font amusingly specific to our interests. But one thing you really do need, for Main Street-style design, is a decent set of “fleurons.” The Art Nouveau movement and increased mechanization around the start of the Twentieth Century had a huge effect on how these typographic ornaments were designed and reproduced, and the variety of them just exploded. You'll see them all over the Main Street windows.

Things really start to get fun here.

If I had to pick one type of font to represent Adventureland as a whole, it would probably be: letters made out of bamboo. Bamboo both real and artificial is everywhere in Adventureland, as building material, decoration, and botanical verisimilitude. Is there any one plant (actually a family of plants) more heavily associated, in the popular imagination, with the tropics? I think not. Another option is to mimic the Adventureland entry sign with letters that look like they are assembled out of sticks or very rough thin planks, like Woodenhead.

But now we get to drill down to the level of individual attractions and features.

Enchanted Tiki Room: The signage for this attraction uses a unique interlocking typeface, where some letters partially nest inside each other. I haven't been able to find a freeware font that mimics this, but there are a couple that are relatively inexpensive. Mickey Avenue, as usual, provides the list (some links broken). Alternately, not mimicking the attraction's signage in particular but very obviously designed with the Enchanted Tiki Room in mind is David Occhino's Tangaroa. If you can afford it, drop the $30. If you can't, at least indulge in the free download that is Tangaroa Glyphs, a dingbat font bursting at the seams with recognizable Tiki Room imagery.

Aladdin's Oasis: I really just want to point out that the commonly found font called Aladdin, often identified as the lettering from the movie title, is actually mimicking the logo of Aladdin Bail Bonds. What you want here is a font called Lampara Magica...which...I unfortunately can't seem to find online anymore. Good thing I snagged it when I did! If you're interested, let me know and we'll work out some way to get it to you.

Jungle Cruise: Well, this is embarrassing: I actually don't know of a font that closely mimics the attraction sign, name placards on the boats, etc. It would be a fascinating case study for someone with even more time to spare on Disneyland and fonts than I have. In the meantime, a font like African definitely gets the idea across. For dingbats, look for pictures of wild animals, African tribal masks, giant leaves and flowers, and other things that suggest a tropical safari.

Indiana Jones Adventure: You're in luck here—the instantly recognizable Indiana Jones title font is readily available as freeware. It goes under various names, but my favorite is a freeware bundle called SF Fedora (making no bones about what it represents). Said bundle also includes an italicized version of the hieroglyphics in the temple. Why italicized? I don't know. Several straight-up versions of the hieroglyphics also exist. Here's one. Here's another, by our friend David Occhino.

Making things “New Orleans Square-themed” is always a bit difficult. There's not just one theme there but at least three distinct ones.

“Street Level” New Orleans Square: This is how I like to refer to the land itself, the part designed to resemble the city of New Orleans. As with Main Street, Art Nouveau-style lettering is certainly appropriate, and here you can get more ornate and stylized. Art Deco is also appropriate, what with The Princess and the Frog having subtly steered the area toward a 1920s aesthetic. For dingbats, look for fleurs-de-lis and Mardi Gras-related images.

Here's something fun: Font 33, an entire typeface extrapolated from the old Club 33 logo.

Pirates of the Caribbean: What you want here are, obviously, “pirate fonts”—an informal category sometimes assigned to fonts with a handwritten-on-parchment look. The creators of such fonts even like to give them piratey names like Rapscallion, Treasure Map Deadhand, and Arrr Matey. Of course, the lettering used in the title of the associated movie franchise has been recreated with the name Pieces of Eight. Dingbat fonts of piratical images are also common. Go nuts!

Haunted Mansion: The lettering on the attraction sign has been lovingly rendered as a freeware font by the delightful name of Ravenscroft. David Occhino has the dingbats side covered with his free Mansion Cryptbats. That's about all you need to design the perfect Haunted Mansion greeting card, party invitation, or any other document!

If designing for New Orleans Square is tricky because it really has three distinct themes, designing for Critter Country is tricky because it doesn't really have any. Ever since it was re-named from Bear Country in the late Eighties, it has taken its identity almost entirely from its attractions, which have veered progressively further away from the area's roots over time and which, to be honest, don't have much in common with each other.

About the best I can recommend is to use lettering styles such as Pinewood, where the letters appear to be made of logs, to bring across the extremely rustic, forested nature of the area. Spruce it up with dingbat images of conifers (see what I did there?). Then, if you don't mind a particular slant, Winnie the Pooh has a disproportionate number of fonts made in celebration of its characters. That's not even all of them, at that link.

That, unfortunately, is all I have time for this week. It's the holidays, and I'm kind of sitting at the edge of Plate Completely Full Street and Energy Levels In the Crapper Avenue. Like I did last year, I'm going on hiatus for a couple of weeks, and then I'll cover the rest of the park after the New Year!

* As usual.

** Fun fact: Under U.S. law, you can’t copyright a lettering style. You can trademark a particular combination of letters in a specific style as a logo (e.g. Coca-Cola), but the lettering style itself is up for grabs. Otherwise, someone would go and copyright heavy block lettering and then no one could make basic signs ever again.