Holy cow. Stanley Kubrick. I just got finished reading an incredibly interesting article about a man in England who was tasked the the gargantuan task of going through Stanley Kubrick’s collection of … information he collected through his career. (I am sorry for the wonky sentence, but the amount of stuff that Kubrick collected defies explanation, heck even sentence structure.)

I am sure most of you know who Stanley Kubrick is, but for those of you still in the dark, he is the director who brought us 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining (not the made for TV version, the first one with Jack Nicholson), A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, and a bunch of other strange, dark, yet masterful works.

The thing that really caught my attention was his love affair with typefaces, in fact one typeface in particular…Futura. Apparently, he used it for the titling in a number of his movies.

I take a break from the boxes to wander over to Tony’s office. As I walk in, I notice something pinned to his letterbox. “POSTMAN,” it reads. “Please put all mail in the white box under the colonnade across the courtyard to your right.”

It is not a remarkable note except for one thing. The typeface Tony used to print it is exactly the same typeface Kubrick used for the posters and title sequences of Eyes Wide Shut and 2001. “It’s Futura Extra Bold,” explains Tony. “It was Stanley’s favourite typeface. It’s sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant.”

“Is this the kind of thing you and Kubrick used to discuss?” I ask.

“God, yes,” says Tony. “Sometimes late into the night. I was always trying to persuade him to turn away from them. But he was wedded to his sans serifs.”

You need to read this article. It is a portrait of a man who either slowly went crazy, or finally had enough money that there was no one left to say “Stanley…seriously, this is ridiculous”.