[jongala]

NBC used a face with insanely big ink traps in their titles for Sochi coverage. It looked like a modified version of Stratum. They looked really strange to me on screen. I'll see if I can find some samples.

EDIT: OK, check these out: http://i.imgur.com/0ovnO49.png

[mxfh]

if you browse the tag "ink traps" at MyFonts[1] quite[2] a[3] number[4] of[5] them[6] are using them solely as an artistic element and clearly not for their originally intended use case.

[1] http://www.myfonts.com/search/tag%3A%22ink+traps%22/fonts/

[2] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/capearcona/ca-uruguay/

[3] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/typeco/trapper/

[4] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/madtype/hydrochlorica/

[5] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mugur-mihai/indento/

[6] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/paratype/yess/

[edit] Here's your NBC Sochi font: Register in Bold or Condensed Bold by Device http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/device/register/bold-condensed/

[jongala]

Very interesting, thanks! I've seen some apparently decorative ink traps before but hadn't really seen fonts really built around them.

And good find on Register -- I think part of my confusion or displeasure with that face is that I was already familiar with Stratum, and in all-caps they are pretty similar (lowercase characters are pretty distinct between the two), so I thought someone had added traps to Stratum just to be different or cool. I now see that Register predates Stratum by a few years, which is interesting also.

I still prefer Stratum …

[mxfh]

Register (2000) still has bragging rights other Stratum (2004) for being 4 years it's senior and being designed by Rian Hughes, who has one of the most unique job interview experiences retold on his Wikipedia page:

He arrived late at his very first job interview at an advertising agency with a lump of dog excrement stuck to the bottom of his portfolio, managed to transfer some of it on to the white shirt he was wearing and the rest onto the meeting-room table. Directors had to open windows to let the stench out. Despite this, he got the job.

Yet they all owe a lot to Morris Fuller Benton's 1932 ATF Agency Gothic, which was extended in 1995 by David Berlow as FB Agency[1] which is similiar to the influential Bank Gothic[2] which he designed two years earlier in 1930.

From there you can venture into that Star Trek TOS typeface (now called Horizon[3]) and into adjacing Microgramma/Eurostile[4][5] territory. It's the future we used to know.

[1]http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/fontbureau/fb-agency/

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Gothic

[3]http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/horizon/

[4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgramma_(typeface)

[5]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostile

[pixelcort]

Perhaps that was to simulate a feeling of Cyrillic script.

[cardiffspaceman]

I'm sort of thinking what you're thinking, but I'm thinking of 20's-30’s "Soviet" graphic design, rather than Cyrillic script.