If you were pressed to find commonalities between Taylor Swift’s Reputation (2017), the title card of the Harry Potter films (2001–2011), Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn (2023), a Juicy Couture tracksuit, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (2024), and Teenage Engineering’s EP-1320 synthesiser, you wouldn’t have to look too closely: all these recent or semi-recent cultural artefacts display blackletter typeface in their logos, wordmarks or title cards. Far from being the sole purview of old-timey Alpine brewhouses, inns and metal bands, blackletter has an almost 1,000-year-long history marked by practicality and self-assertion. It’s also graced the pages of newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which still employ blackletter for their wordmarks – The New York Times, specifically, references an old version of the logo of London Times.
In the first place, blackletter is not even quintessentially Germanic, strictly speaking. In fact, it originated in 12th-century France. Gradually it was used across the continent, and while at first glance we perceive it as ornate and elaborate, it was actually more practical for monastic scribes. Letterforms with angles were easier to write out than curves and rounded shapes, especially during lengthier writing sessions, and blackletter helped monks maintain a consistent style throughout a manuscript. In German-speaking territories, the fragmented appearance of each letter led to this style being labelled Fraktur in the 16th century, a term still used in German to refer to blackletter. The first printing presses also used blackletter. Johannes Gutenberg, for instance, employed a variation of blackletter known as Textura. Outside of German-speaking regions, things were different. In Italy, scholars rediscovering Roman texts moved away from medieval manuscript traditions, and Italian printing presses adopted Roman-inspired typefaces, mostly in Antiqua.
German-language regions remained faithful to blackletter due to the Protestant Reformation. It embodied the anti-Roman sentiment Martin Luther preached, as Roman typefaces were closely associated with the Pope and the corruption of the Catholic Church. Funnily enough, German-language Bibles were printed in blackletter, while words like devil and wrath were highlighted in Roman typeface to stand out. Fraktur became a visual marker of resistance against Rome and Italy. One by one, Protestant countries slowly abandoned blackletter in favour of Roman typefaces, until Germany remained the lone stronghold in the 19th century. Fraktur became a symbol of national and cultural unity, a sentiment exacerbated by the Napoleonic occupation. Additionally, Germany remained fragmented into smaller states until unification in 1871, at which point Fraktur was officially recognised as the country’s typeface. Otto von Bismarck was a staunch supporter, famously refusing to read anything not written in German type. However, liberal, cosmopolitan Germans sought to move away from Fraktur, and by 1891, 40 per cent of German books were printed in Roman type. In 1911, the Reichstag held a vote on whether Germany should switch to Roman typefaces – it ended in a stalemate.
The ties between National Socialism and blackletter were not as strong as one might assume. While Fraktur and serif fonts coexisted on street signs in the 1920s, and Fraktur was widely used when Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, he viewed it as ill-suited to modern progress – incompatible with an industrialised Germany of iron and steel. The posters for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were printed in Roman type and featured markedly classical art. In 1941, the Nazis officially banned Fraktur, branding it a “Jewish script” (Judenlettern).
In the entertainment industry, however, blackletter was far from obsolete. Walt Disney employed it for fairytale-inspired films, regardless of whether they had a medieval setting, especially in those films that were introduced with manuscript-like books in the opening credits – this was the case for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Sleeping Beauty (1959), while Cinderella (1950) used an all-caps version of blackletter for its title card. In the 1970s, bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Motörhead used blackletter for their album titles, and the style retained an association with gothic and horror genres: Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) makes use of it, and Vivienne Westwood’s logo (est. 1971) combines a rounded font with blackletter ornamentation. On the other hand, 1980s sword and sorcery films such as Excalibur (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), and Labyrinth (1986) favoured blockier, Roman-esque typefaces instead.
The 1990s had what we retroactively dubbed “whimsygoth”, a combination of gothic and feminine aesthetics. This is reflected in the 1995 film The Craft, which uses a typeface that is reminiscent of the blackletter variant known as Rotunda (round) and in the font used for the TV show Charmed (1998–2006), which is reminiscent of a quickly sketched blackletter.
By the 2000s, blackletter was everywhere in the music industry. Artists like Beyoncé, The Pussycat Dolls, Sean Paul, Gwen Stefani and Akon all incorporated blackletter logos and wordmarks into their visual branding. In fashion, Juicy Couture, select Reebok campaigns, VETEMENTS and Born X Raised used blackletter to cultivate a streetwear and lounge-inspired aesthetic.
Beyond the expected uses in horror (Nosferatu) and historical epics, blackletter also appears in contemporary films like Lady Bird (2017), and Saltburn, even though it’s used more to convey a certain atmosphere than with the intent of historical accuracy. In fact, when the New York design studio Chips was tasked in 2015 with creating a title card for Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, their explanation was: “In 2015, Greta Gerwig approached us to help her make an online pitch deck for her original screenplay Lady Bird, which she planned to direct. The movie takes place at a Catholic high school, so we playfully set the title in a condensed blackletter typeface. (It felt vaguely biblical).” In Saltburn, it underscores the Gothic novel-like atmosphere of the vast yet claustrophobic estate. Designer Katie Buckley told Print Magazine: “Emerald asked me to do the Saltburn titles because, I quote, ‘I’d like it to feel like the crazy lady in the attic, scratching at the rafters’. How could I resist that brief?”
Ultimately, the resurgence of blackletter isn’t surprising. While Game of Thrones (2011–2019) didn’t directly use it, the show’s medieval aesthetic contributed to its mainstream revival, and trends like bardcore, where contemporary pieces of music are rearranged in a Middle Ages-inspired fashion, have been popular since 2020. Additionally, the widespread use of blackletter in 2000s album covers across genres – hip-hop, pop, R&B – and beloved zeitgeisty brands like Juicy Couture cemented its nostalgic appeal. Design-wise, it injects ornamentation into even the most minimalist layouts and pairs surprisingly well with collage-style visuals. In terms of graphics, it imparts an edge without being too jarring, while its flourishes provide a modicum of ornamentation that does not descend into twee territory, nor is it confined to a particular aesthetic.
Blackletter thrives with colour, especially when it’s light, bright or neon. Take the title card for the podcast Il Fatto delle Sabine (2024–current) hosted by Italian creator sabwayroll. The neon green blackletter sits alongside vintage photographs of the Roman countryside, a cutout of an electric guitar, Sabina’s own likeness and the head of a classical statue. The artistic choice fully conveys the podcast’s mix of highbrow and lowbrow content – per its official description that “in this podcast, Leonardo da Vinci goes hand in hand with DiCaprio”. Similarly, consider the title card of the cultural history podcast Bad Gays (2019–current), where a bright yellow or hot pink wordmark with the word ‘bad’ in blackletter is superimposed over the likeness of a Roman statue in magenta or grayscale hues, or the bright teal blackletter script of Ethan Hawke’s Wildcat (2023).
There’s always the risk of an ornate font becoming the Papyrus of the decade, but the way contemporary designers juxtapose blackletter with unexpected pastel and neon colours only highlights its versatility – freeing it from its traditional associations with medieval fairytales, grimoires and horror.
And let’s say this once and for all: its associations with the far right are weaker than expected. While there was an incident in Dresden where a bus driver printed a sign in blackletter declaring that a German was driving the bus (he was protesting the hiring of Serbian bus drivers in a racist protest) and while Elon Musk tried to promote a blackletter-decorated MAGA hat, far-right aesthetics today lean more toward anime, Roman statues, and occasionally runic symbols, rather than blackletter.
This article is taken from Anima Issue 3, to purchase a copy or subscribe head here