Playful and offbeat GENERATION B has a late 50s-early 60s vibe that goes from beatnik coffeehouse to rustic beach shack and beyond. It’s basically an all-caps font, with big and small versions of each letter plus some alternates. With a little tweaking, you can create the look of quirky hand-lettering.
Inspired by the animated opening titles of the classic live-action Disney film, The Parent Trap (1961), designed by T. Hee, Bill Justice and Xavier Atencio
With its irregular alignment, letter shapes and pairs, this kind of lettering could be seen as a descendant of folk sign-painting (see also Bensfolk), of a quaint historic style (Bensgothic) or of the deliberate nonconformity of Beat sensibility. As often happens so often in design, the eccentric is coopted into a mainstream style.
Yes! That’s Generation B in the subtitle of the new My Little Pony franchise. There’s a fan-made font out there, but this is the genuine article.
Includes two versions of each letter plus alternates, numbers, punctuation, and international characters.
Other TV titles and film posters of the period 1959-1964 use similar styles in association with youth, unconventionality, music and comedy. But sometimes that irregularity is used to suggest a dangerous but exciting break with order, as in horror and drama contexts.
I would argue that Freeman Craw’s ubiquitous Ad Lib font of 1961 is a durable product of this sensibility; it’s still the harried designer’s go-to “funny” font.
