The Font of the Hollywood Stars
The discovery
I am a graphic designer with a passion for type. I love creating new letterforms and finding inspiration around me. Since I moved to Los Angeles in 2018 and resided down in Hollywood, I fell in love with its architecture, history, urban mythology and was stunned by countless artifacts scattered around the neighborhood, such as the famous stars of the Walk of Fame.
I was living close to the Boulevard and used it for walking around, which may sound like a bizarre activity for those of you who live in Los Angeles. This habit allowed me to thoroughly investigate the famous stars on my way to FedEx or a bus station.
Keen on typography, I couldn’t leave the uniqueness of Hollywood Stars’ font unnoticed. I started spotting interesting things. For instance, the same letters looked different on different stars. I found at least 4 versions of ampersand, two types of ‘C’ and even a lowercase ‘e’.
Intrigued, I tried googling “Hollywood Star font”, but found nothing relevant. Mostly there were requests of other designers about where to download the Hollywood Stars font. That was rather surprising. After the Hollywood Hill sign, this is the second most recognizable set of characters in Los Angeles, and probably one of the most well-known fonts ever made.
I remember the exact moment when I realized that the font simply doesn’t exist. It felt like a unique opportunity to interact with the history of Hollywood through typographic research.
And of course, I couldn’t stand these make-your-own-star kits with Franklin Gothic and Arial character sets anymore!
The research
I started collecting letters by taking pictures of each star I encountered. While photographing letters, I tried capturing all distinctive details and variations of each character. Also, I gladly realized that the right to interact with a star on the Walk of Fame is highly appreciated by other participants of the promenade. Though it was not just a single expedition — I keep coming back to the Boulevard every week and keep discovering new previously unnoticed details.
The next step was to analyze the pictures and start tracing letters on a computer.
From the beginning, I decided to keep as close to the original shape of the letters as possible — in pursuit of preserving the current state of brass letters. I figured out that the charm and magic of the Hollywood Star font are supported by several qualities. One of them is imperfect details. Cast marks, holes, chips, cuts, deformation caused by constant smoothing from tourists’ soles, wheeled suitcases and skateboards, and at this point, my own shoes — all these marks are evidence of real history, which eventually form the font face.
The other important factor which affects the outlook of Hollywood Star font is time. Obviously, the letters were evolving, new characters were added, some of them could be lost or re-casted. Probably, the individual approach to making each star plaque caused the inconsistency between characters. Who knows what percentage of characters remain original since 1958–when the first prototype stars were installed for demonstration purposes, two years before the official opening of the Walk of Fame.
And the third thing that makes Hollywood Stars font unique is its design. It looks like a condensed geometric grotesque. Much closer to Akzidenz-Grotesk than to Franklin Gothic, in my opinion. From the professional typographer’s point of view, the design of the letters might be considered as controversial. But at the same time, the imperfection and oddness make this font so special and recognizable.
First results
I named the first iteration of the font Ragged, for all the small chips and dents which represented the history and fleur of Hollywood. Though my curiosity demanded moving on further because I wanted to see the original letter shapes on the screen of my computer, which assumed some reverse engineering.
At this point, this process started to remind me of one similar to researching a medieval manuscript. To recreate genuine shapes I must be thinking as the author of the original piece, understanding their logic and creative approach. This is truly an amazing aspect of the work of a graphic designer — thinking in an alternative, simulated state of mind.
After days of work, I came up with the second iteration named Clean, as an attempt of digging back to the original shapes. It was a challenge to keep the original design and not make letters look too perfect, typography-wise. For instance, the tail of Q, or K’s leg are still raising questions. The way stem of Z is connected with its arms might also cause some tension but several fixing attempts led to loss of esthetic identity. Hence, I decided to stop there. Nonetheless, the more I look at these characters, the more I get used to their oddness.
The critique
I presented my project at one of TypeThursday’s monthly events to get feedback and additional inspiration. TypeThursday is a global community of type enthusiasts with chapters all over the world, including Los Angeles, which is a perfect place for projects like mine. Fellow type geeks provided me with useful critique, which led me to new ideas on the further development of the font. Like adding categorization emblems to the character set and implementing variable font features, besides other minor tweaks.
I was also glad to realize my sympathy for the Ragged version was shared by the audience. I think that imperfection and quirkiness should be appreciated more. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Type design is constantly evolving and changing. Hollywood Star font is my attempt at taking a snapshot of Hollywood in the present. Considering the upcoming renovation of the Boulevard and the Olympic Games of 2028, I believe that it is important to pay more attention to preserving elements of environmental design and particularly protect the legacy of street typography.
Update: While I was working on this publication, the unique street sign of Morgan’s Camera Shop on Sunset Boulevard with its distinctive type design was vandalized. This is undoubtedly a sad reminder of how vulnerable cultural artifacts are, even the most well-known and exposed ones.
If you’re interested in getting updates on the Hollywood Star Font project and my ideas of street type preservation in Los Angeles, feel free to follow me on Instagram: @kalliostro.
The Hollywood Star font is available for everyone for non-commercial use: https://alexeystar.com/hollywood-star-font/.
Alexey Staroselets is a graphic designer and type enthusiast specializing in entertainment branding. A multi-disciplinary specialist, he’s applying his passion for custom letterforms to create logotypes, film posters, music album covers, film titles and other visual assets. Among his clients are agencies, production companies, filmmakers, and artists from the US and Europe.
