Let's go find some crystals....or something..

Hello fellow typography fans, it's another Thursday which means another wonderful look into words in the world around us.

I hope you'll permit me to fly my geek flag this week as I examine the type of Final Fantasy titles.

This image is the title screen of my favorite game of the series Final Fantasy VIII which was the second of the series to be available on the orginal Sony Playstation.  It was one of the first of the series to also include Full Motion Videos (FMVs) for scenes in the story that were computer animated.  They are not the most advanced now, but they were at the time the game was released.

Thanks to WhatTheFont.com, I was able to identify the typeface as Runic MT Condensed.  While my adventures in font identification have had me skeptical thus far, I do believe it's an exact match.  (If not it is VERY close.)

The title screen is mainly informative. It tells anyone watching the screen at the time the title of the game (In case you forgot or something).  It's meant to be pretty, but still very readable.

As far as I can tell, the title screen of every major title in the series uses this typeface.

Meijer, a midwestern original and typography example

Disclaimer: This is a make-up post for the week of March 4th. 

A bit of background: I grew up in a small town called Belding in Michigan.  The next town over (about 10 minutes away by car), is Greenville Michigan.  This is where the Meijer Superstore was born.  In Michigan there are Meijer stores all over the place.  The town I lived in was between the birthplace of the store, and another town Ionia to the south which also had a Meijer store.  Imagine my happiness when I moved to Champaign-Urbana and found that I can still shop in such a familiar store.  It's the only place I can find a few specific items that are mainly sold in my home state (Faygo soda! Granted I can only get 1 flavor in diet in a 20 oz bottle in the store's gas station...but it's more than I can get anywhere else in this state!!).  Yes, I love Meijer.  I'm weird.  I'm aware of this.

Some time in the early 2000's, Meijer underwent somewhat of a typographical makeover.  For most of my lifetime growing up in the Great Lakes State, the Meijer logo looked like this:

Their color scheme was mostly just red.  Now with the newer logo (shown above), their color scheme is a mixture of red and blue. 

About the type:
According to Whatthefont.com, the older logo is closest to Dragon TS-Bold however, the dots on the i and j are the wrong shape and the serifs on the Es are wrong.  The newer logo appears to be Linotype-tetria-black. 

How it's used:
It's the graphic identity for the store.

Where it can be seen:
In Champaign or Urbana on the store and within the store.  Also on any printed materials put out by the store.
Fun Fact: My father used to work for a company that had a contract with Meijer and used to do the land surveys for land where new stores were going to be built in the Midwest. 

Word Art - (Not the Microsoft version)

In a slight departure of the usual anaylisys of type I find when I'm out and about, I bring you something a friend shared with me on facebook today.

This is a picture called "Cat and Mouse" by Margaret Shepherd.  I found the image on Neatorama which was linked by my friend.  This image uses calligraphy to form the words cat and mouse into their respective animal forms.  It's a very neat image and I thought it should be shared.