God is in the details
The headline of this post, a quote generally attributed to Gustave Flaubert, simply means that details matter. A variation of the quote, “the devil is in the details,” warns of the appearance of flaws under scrutiny should said details be ignored.
Corey Holms is a guy who clearly knows about details. A designer/typographer responsible for The Sopranos logo, as well as typefaces developed for Sony's PSP and Veer, Corey's most recent project was recreating the logotype for the new film, Watchmen.
In a recent Lettercult interview, Corey discusses what changes he made to the Watchmen logotype as it appeared on the original graphic novel.
Corey immeditely noticed something was off about the type. (I noticed it right away. You probably will, too. If not, you won't be able to unsee it once you've seen it).Here's the original Watchmen logotype as it appears on the graphic novel:
And here is the rebuilt version used for the film, posters, etc.:
See the difference? The “C” on the original logotype has been vertically squashed to sit on the baseline, and, thus, looks smaller than the rest of the letters in the title (not to mention that it breaks a typographic “commandment” by disproportionately scaling the type, a pet peeve of mine). Not a big deal, you say? Wrong! Little differences like this have a tendency to multiply. Left unchecked, they can easily become the difference between good design and great design.
—Tom
