About a year ago, I released Womprat, a Star Wars logo font.
When I set out to make it with Ender, perhaps the most important goal was that if you type “Star Wars,” it has to look exactly as you expect it to. (It’s amazing how many fonts attempt to replicate this style without getting this right.)
The thing is …there’s not just one logo.
Star Wars premiered at Mann’s Chinese Theater in 1977 with a title that looked like this:
Even though this horizontal lockup did not appear in the film or on its posters, it was used in some marketing material like this marquee. (The stencil appearance is likely for fabrication.) However, now this horizontal lockup is seen everywhere, especially since the 1983 Return of the Jedi logo:
By making use of OpenType features like Default Ligatures and Contextual Alternates, typing “Star Wars” in Womprat will automatically look like this:
Perfect. Not only are the letters connected, but certain letters are extended to fill the right amount of space. You might even notice the S is shaped differently!
In most apps, you don’t even have to do anything special to get what you came here for. It just works out of the box.
See how the center point is exactly at the tip of the R? Follow the invisible line upward and you’ll see it’s also the tip of the W. The reason “Star” and “Wars” are of equal length is because of the logo’s vertical lockup.
The vertical lockup is the most well-known version of the Star Wars logo. Here’s what it looked like in the original film:
In its outlined state, it’s easier to see some inconsistencies in weight. The stem of the T is narrower than the stem of the R. The top part of the S is thinner than the bottom part of the S. Womprat addresses these issues.
Since the Contextual Alternates feature doesn’t work across multiple lines, if you want to make this version of the logo, first type “Star” and “Wars” on separate lines, and turn on the OpenType feature called Titling Alternates. For ideal line-spacing, your type-to-leading ratio should be 48pt and 35pt, respectively.
Notice how both words are perfectly justified. That’s how you know you got it right.
In 1981, the The Empire Strikes Back logo was surrounded by a border made with the Star Wars logo:
There are lots of quirks about the Empire logo, with many of its own variations. For now, let’s focus on the border.
Fair warning: this is a multi-step process, but it’s pretty straightforward.
Start by typesetting a title with “Star” above and “Wars” below. “Star” and “Wars” should be half the point size of the title itself. If your title is 48pt (with 35pt leading), “Star” and “Wars” should be 24pt. For “Wars” to be the correct distance from the final line of your title, this line needs 19pt leading. Of course, multiples of these numbers work too.
We did the math so you don’t have to guess.
In this font’s repertoire (which you can find in Adobe’s Glyphs panel or Apple’s Font Book app), there are box-drawing characters for each corner, which you can insert as text.
For the next step, you’ll want to convert the text to a vector object.
Then, drag the shorter line’s corner characters until their points snap to the wider line’s corner characters:
After that, grab “Star” and move it until the leftmost points of the S snap to the corner character. Then, grab “Wars” and do the same until the rightmost points of the S snap to the corner character on the right:
Finally, drag the two orphaned points on each corner across the length of the mark to meet the R in “Star” and overlap the W in “Wars”:
Phew. A bit of work, but the result is great. You may also want to merge shapes and remove excess points to prevent rendering errors. A similar technique can be used to achieve the top and bottom rules in the Return of the Jedi logo too.
Here’s a one-of-a-kind weirdo. Marvel Comics made the first Star Wars comic book, and it had a wacky logo that didn’t even have any ligatures!
To achieve this in Womprat, we need to use a Stylistic Set. If you’re unfamiliar, this feature is awkwardly tucked away in most apps. In Photoshop, you can find it in the Properties panel under Type Options. In Illustrator, it’s in the OpenType panel. In Apple apps, Command-T will open the Fonts window. Select •••, then Typography.
Turn on Titling Alternates, turn off Default Ligatures, and finally select “Wanga” (from the Stylistic Sets menu). Now, you have that wider S, a pointy W, and a very weird separation between characters.
If you want—though I don’t recommend it—you can squish the whole wordmark to get closer to the real one, but it’s my opinion that this gets at the spirit of the comic book logo while staying true to sensibilities of Womprat.
The Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition logo sometimes—not always—had a rounder S and a different pointy W from the comic book version. Also, it’s extra wide.
Turn on Titling Alternates and select “X-Wing” (from the Stylistic Sets menu) for the wider S and lower pointy W!
Like the note above, you can stretch this out horizontally for a more authentic look, but don’t expect to find that R anywhere in Womprat. It’s likely the result of sampling other fonts at the time of creation.
In 2008 (when I was only 20 years old), I drew a Star Wars logo that deviates a bit from the real one. Since then, it has found its way into many news articles about Star Wars.
Most notably, it had a stylized R (similar to the one found in “Trilogy” for the Special Edition), but instead of connecting to another letter as a ligature, it extends toward the A, and the T mirrors it. Both the T and R have angled terminals that match the A.
As of this writing, my fan-art logo from 16 years ago is on the Rotten Tomatoes page for the Star Wars Saga, which feels very weird to me. Don’t they know?
If you ever find yourself wanting this unholy abomination, turn on Titling Alternates, “X-Wing,” and “Director’s Cut.”
Louie, that’s ridiculous.
Yes, now let’s move on to where this gets interesting.
The strangest thing was when The Mandalorian premiered in 2019 with an all-new Star Wars intro. It had an extended T and an angled terminal matching the A, just like mine.
I’m confident that characteristic was never in any official Star Wars logo before then. Only mine from 11 years earlier.
If the original 1977 Star Wars logo had a high-waisted W, this one has a weirdly low-waisted W. (The standard W in Womprat is very centrally-waisted.)
Pay no attention to the W and A that unfortunately no longer share an angle, but do pay attention to the R that is also angled against the W to complete the look!
Though I had no hand in this logo, I am absolutely chalking this one up to the influence from my wallpaper circulating on the Internet for over a decade.
Now, you can make The Mandalorian version of the logo with Womprat by only turning on Stylistic Alternates.
Easy.
This isn’t every Star Wars logo you could theoretically make with Womprat, but this is what Womprat is capable of with only 5 letters.
Womprat has over 3000 characters, including a sea of ligatures, hundreds of icons, and and lots of little surprises. It supports over 100 languages, with Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Katakana character sets.
Womprat will return in Part II, but you can get it today.