And is that a non-curly apostrophe in O’Connor? Oh ho ho, don’t get me started.

I love this blog. I am delurking in the name of “smart” quotes and apostrophes!

But you’re not going to mention the flagrant use of Zapfino in the opening credits?!

It’s not just fonts that are off.

In season 2 episode 2, Don Draper has a drink in a Japanese bar and the song “Ue O Muite” is playing in the background. If the bar is playing a record imported from Japan a year after its release there, it makes sense. If the bar is playing the US release of the song, it’s a year early.

Also, season one episode episode 11 features “Agua de Beber” by Astrud Gilberto, which wasn’t released commercially until 1965.

I hate Arial too and always type my Word docs in Helvetica, but if you’re going to be this attuned to the detail, its worth noting that the opening theme music, while sampling from the era, is most obviously a modern creation. I don’t think the credits necessarily require era-specificity.

The end credits don’t need to be set in a font that existed in 1962—but they should be set in font that looks like it could have existed in 1962. (Which is why the Zapfino doesn’t bother me—although, @tiddleywink, I admit that I hadn’t noticed it.) I’m mainly pointing out how odd it is that the show’s designers, who care deeply about every single detail on the show, don’t care enough to exercise control over the look and feel of the end credits. The appearance of Arial is primarily an aesthetic failure, and it stands out because everything else on the show (or almost everything else) is so carefully tended to.

All of the production equipment used is modern - the cameras, lighting, microphones, mixers, editing software, endless etc.

They could’ve chosen to use old equipment, but they aren’t nearly as anal as the fans, apparently.

It’s my favorite show on TV at the moment - well, the only show I bother watching actually.

The main detail they got wrong so far was “It’s Toasted!” I found it confusing that they claim to be inventing this phrase, when, in the real world, it had been invented 40 years earlier.

Clearly the closing credits represent our departure from the world of 1960 and return to 2008. Hence the Arial font.

duh. :-)

Are you sure it’s not Grotesque? Looks like Grotesque to me.

They’re very similar, yes, but up close it’s very clear that the “R”s are those hideous Arial “R”s. The screenshots I posted aren’t high-res enough for details like that to be visible.

Zapfino is not shown in the opening credits; it’s Lucida Handwriting, also an ahistoricism. Zapfino was, however, used in one of Sal’s comps.

My friends and I have been tracking these errors for a while, but now that Kottke has linked to you, maybe other people will take them seriously.

Joe Clark is 100% correct; I was “misremembering” the nagging anachronisms. I would like to agree with elserracho about the “we now return you to 2008” theory.

Arial is still ugly, though. :)

Even if the end titles were set in Helvetica, there’s something about the abruptness of the end titles that is entirely off with the meticulousness of the show. (There is no slow fade to credits — it’s usually a cut to a black frame, beat, abrupt “Executive Producer MATTHEW WEINER.) This may be a conscious choice. Weiner is an auteur; it seems on the surface entirely out of character to choose such a jarring set of end credits. My sense has always been that the end credits serve to bring us back into the present — that the last sixty minutes are a story, and simply a story — and that by choosing a typical, normal, “undesigned” end credit sequence, he is alluding to the contemporary aesthetic sensibility of America as it is lived by normal people. (He has stated in the past that the art direction of the show reflects the lives of the people living in a particular moment rather than the lives portrayed by popular culture/media of that era.)

I do documentaries for a news network. We used to design the closing credits, but our network has decided to run promos during the closing credits and has given us the lower third to run credits. More and more, closing credits are becoming an afterthought.

The simplest answer is that this is an homage to The Sopranos, the show that gave Matthew Weiner his big break, as the credit sequences are practically idnetical.

But there is an important difference between opening credits and closing credits. Opening credits are prepping you for the world of the show. Closing credits are giving you a rest and buffer before you go on the the next thing (reality, or another show).

Opening credits are to draw you in - closing credits are to ease you out. So the Ariel jolt is perfect!

Opening title and end credit sequences are often contracted out, given little design thought, and are rushed through due to program time constraints.

People who do video titling like end credits (rather than the design-rich opening title sequence, which is part of the show’s identity) may be unversed in good text design (and likely are more ignorant of fonts and text layout than print or web designers).

Titling for film and video can be done very artistically, or as an afterthought. If not done very well, as suggested here, then it is more likely an afterthought. There are very few books that even cover this topic, especially post-production/editing books (and other training material).

The producer(s) should have paid the same people who did the opening title sequence to create a well-designed template for the end credits (if it wasn’t already done by the same people, but without much consideration, either in design or execution).

About the jerkiness of the timing of the end credits… There are many different possible reasons… poor timing of the sequence by the editor/titler, time remapping to have the entire sequence fit in a specific time allotment, and time remapping due to the entire episode having been sped about 5% to allow for more non-paid promos during commercial breaks (networks often speed up episodes to give them a few more minutes per hour show, in order to add in promo spots for other network shows without having to take time away from the number of paid spots).

And, unfortunately, just like MS Word’s default fonts, Arial is very often the default text font in many titling tools.

In case anyone is interested, here are two good books about titling for film and video:

Creative Titling with Final Cut Pro by Diannah Morgan

Title Design Essentials for Film and Video by Mary Plummer.

Thanks so much for that thoughtful and informative post, DM.

because finicky type doesn’t work on screen, you might also want to consider getting a life, but you know that already!

Perhaps they are merely trying to (subtly) point to the timeline path they wish the show to eventually lead. From late 50’s to early 80’s. Good observation on the fonts just bringing it to a logical reason….

To make this worse, the type in the end credits appear to be optically compressed. The horizontal strokes appear thicker than the vertical strokes.

you people are reading too into the font choice at the end. the thing is that it probably wasn’t a choice. one design firm designed the opening credits and some production house put in the end ones, and probably did not consider the difference between the two faces. concerning the abruptness of the transition to credits— its a device, its intentional, and its dramatic and effective. anyone watch lost? they do they same thing.

I’m fairly certain that the typewriters in Mad Men are anachronisms. The secretaries have IBM Selectric II typewriters on their desks, which were introduced about 1971. They ought to be using the original Selectric, which was introduced circa 1961.

Yes, those closing credits are a mess. Fortunately, they’re generally squeezed to a small fraction of the screen while next week’s program or some other show is being hawked.

They also got the typewriters wrong.

The original IBM Selectric wasn’t introduced until 1961, while most of the first season of Mad Men took place in 1960. And the IBM Selectric Model II, which shows up on some desks at Sterling Cooper, was introduced in the early 1970s.

Also, the oohing and aahing over the introduction of a ‘new’ Xerox 914 (at least the got the model right) at Sterling Cooper was a bit over-the-top, as the 914 was introduced in 1959. Granted, the administrative personnel would’ve been delighted to leave mimeograph and carbon paper behind, but by the time Sterling Cooper’s 914 arrived in Season 2, xerography wasn’t quite as newfangled as presented in the episode in question.

A common anachronism which I believe Mad Men has avoided is the modular telephone cord. Bell Labs sent the specifications to Western Electric in 1970, and the first time I recall seeing modular base and handset cords was when my family moved to a new hose in 1978. Any story set before approximately 1975 should be using telephones with fat hard-wired handset cords and either hard-wired base unit cords or base unit cords with the old 4-prong plugs. Handset cords are, of course, a good deal more visible on-screen.

Closing credits are usually done by an older on an old PC by a computer savvy on-line editor, whose main goal is to make the credits look ‘clean’. Sometimes this will be months after the show has been edited and sometimes thousands of miles away. Usually he’s given direction by a busy producer, who has no design sense and couldn’t really care less.

Credits are highly political. People are always mad. Contracts force weird stuff to go into them. People get left out. They end up being changed a lot, sometimes a dozen times.

Um. Wow. You have nothing better to do than worry about this? I wish I had your life!

All that aside, you have to understand something: chances are, whoever put that last bit together was just a college student who didn’t know there was any history at all behind one font or another, and they didn’t even know they got it -right- in the first place.

Btw - they aren’t called “fonts” (I used that before for your sake) — their called “Type.” There’s some real history for ya, from a real Graphic Designer.

Thank you, Roland Dobbins!

The Selectric II anomaly first appeared in ep. 1, as Peggy’s machine when she sat down at her desk for the very first time.

Online archives cite Selectric II’s release date as 1970— which is when my mother’s office received them, thrilling me as I typed my high school’s underground paper and political manifestos with its self-correcting feature. The first Selectric was noticeably rounder and sleeker— very Eames-like— sort of the difference between an 80’s Taurus and an 80’s boxy Volvo.

As for more OCD historical inaccuracies, the suspended ceiling with 18” square white “tiles” sitting within a white grid frame, with occasional recessed light fixtures, were ALSO not likely to exist in a hip Manhattan agency in 1960 or 1962.

Far more likely would be… -12” square white accoustic tiles with random hole patterns punched in them to reveal dark-colored fiber beneath the the white surface, and a similarly dark-colored border. Like my childhood dentist.

-Fluorescent tubes encased in “egg crate” like grates hanging about 18” from the ceiling.

My theory is that the production designer hates the PR people— or vice versa— resulting in making the show look foolish when it trumps its historical “accuracy.”

Many TV shows are produced on a pretty tight turnaround, and as a result, the end credits are typically thrown together at the very last minute. As a TV critic, I often receive screener discs in advance for many shows, including “Mad Men”, which basically end with a title card saying “End Credits TK”, which remains onscreen for the length of time allocated to the credits, after which the production company logos appear as they would at the end of a regular credits sequence. That doesn’t necessarily excuse them on the font choice, but it’s still a context worth keeping in mind.

@CD:

“All that aside, you have to understand something: chances are, whoever put that last bit together was just a college student who didn’t know there was any history at all behind one font or another, and they didn’t even know they got it -right- in the first place.”

A design student is usually required to take some sort of typography class, no? So they should know about the history of a typeface.

“Btw - they aren’t called “fonts” (I used that before for your sake) — their called ‘Type.’”

The added irony of a “real Graphic Designer” not knowing how to use the proper contraction for “they are”.

Hah! That’s easily trumped by a more glaring incident though admittedly it only happened once. The office manager blithely remarked that ” the medium is the message” in an episode a few weeks ago. Maybe Macluhan got he idea from her but his famous book was not to be published until several years in the “future”.

Don’t even get me started on Happy Days or That 70s Show.

It gets even worse. In the shrunk-down credits during the promo this week, there were credits for “AP’s” - is the madness of the plural apostrophe reaching into America now, as it has been in Britain?

I’m glad that I am not the only designer who has noticed this horrible visual defecation on an otherwise tight campaign.

I almost forgot, they use Arial Narrow or Condensed in the bumpers to advertise the show as well. So AMC is guilty of this Arial Infraction. Shame!

– off topic –

The criticism I have of the show is that they are guilty of cultural revisionism in a very insidious manner and should be slapped for that. There are too many examples to mention, but rest assured, it is true. Cheers.

ever notice the credits of woody allen films? he uses the most beautiful serif font. i’ve been a fan of that for a long time.

You know, I don’t care if it’s anachronistic (although this conversation is super interesting - great to hear from all these design peeps!)…the end credits of Mad Men piss me off because they are heinous, and given the fact that the show is so great to look at, that is very jarring.

It’s funny, when I first saw those credits done in that particular format, white on black, with that particular font, I immediately thought, “Hey those look EXACTLY like the credits for THE SOPRANOS.”

I have never gone back to confirm, but if so, you can imagine why AMC might have wanted to make the association. Subtle, subconscious…but there nonetheless.

I agree! You know that always bothered me, but I don’t think I was fully aware of why! Thanks for pointing this out. Now it will bother me even more!

…and the desks. The desks they sit at were not produced by any steel desk manufacturer until after 1970. Prior to that, all steel office desks were made with round corners, not square.

Just my 2 cents worth:

I prefer Arial to Helvetica and the Grotesk 215. (I am a former commercial artist and reasonably type savvy.)

Perhaps people don’t like Arial because it’s from Microsoft. I know I didn’t at first for that very reason.

Other abuses (straight quotes, squashed or stretched type, etc) seem more annoying than simple the choice of Arial.

(BTW, always having a PS printer of some kind at hand, I actually have never seen printed Arial. The Arial-to-Helv mapping has always produced Helvetica.)

I just recently started watching madmen after hearing about all the hoopla, and am now quasi addicted to it. I’m not old enough to know if the details are correct or not, but from what I gather the show is 99% historically accurate. Good point about Ariel though. Strange that the production company would spend hours upon hours of getting all the details right, and then flub the ending credits. I think Andrew hit it on the head above…the credit addition seems to be a mere afterthought.

I guess I’ve just missed these horrible excuses of end credits since I usually turn the TV off when an episode is done. (Sorry to the great cast and staff members; I promise to read up on you on IMDB!) But I physically cringed when I looked at the example above.

For a lucid example of why end credits are definitely part of, if not the world at least the show, is to watch any Pixar movie. The later the more extravagant.

They blew all the budget on the show itself. Remember, this is AMC, not HBO or ABC. They’re working with what they’ve got, and while I agree that at lesat setting it in something like maybe even Helvetica or Futura Condensed would have been an easy fix, I think that it’s permissible. And as everyone else has mentioned, it’s not the only mistake in the show, font-wise.

Speaking on the whole Zapfino issue - I actually googled “Mad Men” and Zapfino after seeing an episode from Season 1 - when they used the font in a headline for an ad for Mowhawk Airlines. Did anyone else see this? It drove me CRAZY!!! Not just because I am so sick of sub-par design using it, but also since obviously it was created in 1983. Come on Mad Men writers - focus!

The Zapfino infraction, the Palatino on the Church fliers, and the 1965 Massimo Vagnelli redesign of American Airlines are the most egregious mistakes I’ve caught on MM. They’re like nails on my proverbial chalkboard. None of those things feels even a bit of a piece with the show. If they had squeaked by with some of the House faces for their scripts and sans (Holiday, Neutraface, LasVegas, etc) at least they’d feel part-and-parcel. But Zapfino? For a hip discount airline? Really. Really. C’mon. I know Sterling Cooper is the B-movie agency, but seriously. These are big mistakes. Someone clearly didn’t read their Bringhurst (or their Craig, or Meggs, or Heller…).

But nothing, and I mean N O T H I N G, the MM designers have done tops putting Lucida Handwriting into the opening credit sequence. A clunky script (ok, I know, cheap shot) designed for computer screens in the age of digital type has absolutely no place in this series. What on EARTH were they thinking? It doesn’t feel even a little bit like 196X. I love this show, but I still have a hard time watching the opening sequence before everything lands in the office…because I can’t STAND looking at the Lucida. It’s just wrong.

I am so happy to find other people nitpicking the typography on this show. I was a graphic design major way back when we used wax and made stats. (I was a kid in the 60s.) Another scene booboo I noticed was the one where the priest gives Peggy a lift. I’m no expert, but the signage on the stores on the street and the fonts they used seemed really off to me there as well. Also, it also looks like they may do the presentation art digitally (very flat); wouldn’t it have been done with ink and gouache or such back then?

I have nothing against typographic nitpicking but I think you are looking at the wrong place for “jarring anachronisms”. You might notice that the opening sequence of Mad Men makes no attempt at being of the early sixties. The style of the opening as well as the music is deliberately contemporary. The point is this: the opening and ending credits are outside the early 60s time warp of the show itself. If you are looking for typographical anachronisms before and after the actual filmed events then you are meant to find them. The credits and the opening sequence are set (typographically and historically) in the present, in order to throw the elaborate production details of the show itself into sharper relief.

There is a typography continuity problem with the opening credits as well. As the “camera” pans down the side of International Style glass curtain walls infused with advertising images, the font Lucida Handwriting (post-millennium) proclaims something to the effect of “the perfect gift”, or is it “the perfect gin”? Either way the c. 2002 Lucida Handwriting did not exist, and has been pressed into service likely because to the opening credits designer it recalled the Photolettering® ad scripts of the 1950s and ’60s. Belief is suspended. “Mad Men” comes so wonderfully fetishistically close to perfect the errors become more acute.

Ang Lee’s “The Ice Storm” is as perfect as I have seen, like “Mad Men’s” date-perfect inclusion of the Valentine’s Day broadcast of Jackie Kennedy’s White House tour.

Well, at least Star Trek: The Next Generation got it right. Their fonts are always consistent with the time period.

Wait, unless they screwed something up when they were in the past with Samuel Clemens (they probably did).

a lot of smart comments. thanks.to me the wardrobe is pretty off and beards in an ad agency in the early sixties?

Fair enough. I’ve never seen it “live” but I often watch the opening credits even though I could skip them. I’m always on to the next thing as soon as it’s over though and I’ve never looked as the credits at the end. As I said though, fair enough, it’s not too much to ask.

Jon