Where would HXC shirts be without Varsity font? It never goes out of style… let’s take a stroll down the years and visit Varsity in all it’s glory…
We got the sans serif, but not quite there yet...
There was a time before Varsity, when just block letter was ok, but then someone discovered varsity jackets, and as stone makes spark makes fire:
One of a kind, OG varsity jacket
Other NYHC youth crew bands jumped on the look:
Complete with 'outline' look!
Varsity couldn’t be contained to NYC tho:
And the demise of youth crew didn’t kill off Varsity either – by ’94 it had moved cross country:
Prob designed by Victory in Chicago, but still...
If you’re going to revive youth crew (wait, that happened?!?), someone better invite Varsity!
The awesome thing about Varsity is that even in 2011, you can rock it no matter the flavor of your band – ignorant Boston bro-core? Check!
SF Bay pop-punk? Varsity is there!
Wait... hmm.. looks familiar...
My dear Varsity – please never change! Well, you kinda can’t…
Most shirt pics from the How’s Your Edge shirt database – that sounds so nerdy I couldn’t have made it up…
I laughed…and I still love the varsity font
Death Before Dishonor only had one good song, that one “Searching For The Light” or whatever.
no one else caught this?
I know, right? Total posers around here…
man so many things to touch on here…
1. someone needs to do a post explaining how varsity jackets, nikes, and mesh shorts came about because SSD, DYS, and the early Rev bands were mostly rich white jocks (compare and contrast with LES squatter punx).
2. someone also needs to explain how “youth crew” hardcore died at the hands of metalcore circa 1990 (aside from Mouthpiece and the handful of other bands who kept at it) and was painfully uncool until a decade or so later
3. also need to do a post about how amateurish/lulzy the distressings are on all the newer bands shirts- like they got some free font called “VARSITY GRUNGE.TTF” and called it a day
oh, about #1 and 2, I realize that’s common knowledge among old people like us but it could be funny to imagine the confused looks on younger kids’ faces when they find out that hardcore used to be for people who smoked angel dust, ate out of trash cans and didn’t own a pair of shoes.
Holy fuck – exactly what triggered this whole topic, but I figured no one wanted to hear ‘old talk’.
Hahahaha – ok, my original idea/post touched on most of those things (mostly 1), then I thought to myself ‘Sarge said posts of 3 paragraphs or under work’ – and I dropped it all for t-shirt pics.
ha! well it’s a rich topic, you should do it! if it ends up being long then so be it
Maybe you could show with some kind of graph or ven diagram…
like they got some free font called “VARSITY GRUNGE.TTF” and called it a day
THIS
http://www.misprintedtype.com/v4/
This guy rules the grunge type scene.
This page is an attempt to archive and display rare, classic, CRUCIAL, as well as ordinary, hardcore and punk shirts.
Srs – I could not have made that up if I tried.
When I die, I want my tombstone to be written in Varsity with a live shot engraved on the back.
This post has one glaring omission. A shirt by the band named VARSITY
team effort 7″
The varsity font = youth crew is a branding triumph. Also its big and bold and easily read at a distance. Which is a limitation of those equally branded, “hairy” death metal letters.
typography? cant you rage out a lil bit more about the serif, outline etc other details of varsity varieties? or no?
Hahahahaha – Rage Against The Font?!?
In all srs – I’m completely nerd/pro level into typography and fonts. Could probably go on for hours on exactly this topic – but outside of maybe Sarge, don’t think others would care. Love Tschichold’s layouts for example… and don’t get me started on the beautiful work DTL is doing digitizing fonts.
yo, that first YOT tee isn’t really what you’d call a “varsity font”.. it’s helvetica black, duder. also, chronologically, that shirt would have come out well into the “youth crew” era considering it’s got a slogan from YOT’s last lp and the pic from their final 7″ that was out in 89 or 90. the origin of the jock fonts goes back much earlier to SSD and from there maybe to the GB 7″?
as much as Bold would be thrown into that mix via the company they kept, their logo is alternately compacta bold and/or some flavor of helvetica compressed, which i don’t really think of as truly “varisty” either. even project X is in helvetica bold on their 7″ cover.
crucial youth crew that repped jock fonts are like GB, side by side and Judge. in fact, i don’t think YOT ever actually used a true varsity font on any of their records! bands like GB, Bold, Up Front, Chain of Strength all definitely had much more of a jock font presence than YOT.
if you’re going to expand this post, you also can’t forget the 90s bands like Ten Yard Fight that kept the athletic theme going in both name and typefaces.
Death Before Dishonour isn’t brocore at all… They play pretty traditional hardcore, listen to “Better Ways to Die.” Sick album, if not just listen to the last song where Mark Unseen makes an appearance. SO GOOD.