What seemed until recently a disappearing form of artistic expression – album covers – has seen a resurgence as the 12-inch long play record has become popular again among record collectors and audiophiles. YouTube has become a popular medium for collectors to share their enthusiasm for vinyl records. One such enthusiast, a young Malaysian named Beng Yi Wei Damien with a channel called Random Music Stuff, has accrued more than 14,000 followers since the launch about a year ago. Random Music Stuff uses an interesting font called Bootle for the page header, the logo, and titles in the videos typically in white on black .
Bootle is a free font consisting only of all caps and with large B and optional drop T, plus numerals and some punctuation. It is based on the original Beatles’ logotype which dates from the latter part of 1963, not long after Ringo Starr joined the band. Simon Garfield, in his 2010 book Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, suggests that Ringo needed a new drum kit and the band’s manager Brian Epstein wanted to promote the band’s name. Ivor Arbiter, a Ludwig Drums dealer in London, sketched out the now-iconic Beatles wordmark, with its distinctive tall B and drop T. It was likely a local sign maker named Eddie Stokes who painted it onto the kick drum for Arbiter, adapted from Goudy Oldstyle (or at least Garfield suggests as much). Though the wordmark never appeared on any of their albums while the band was recording, it became famous after its appearance in live shows such as Shea Stadium in 1965. More recently, it appeared on the box set of original studio recordings as well as in the video game The Beatles: Rock Band from 2009.
The Bootle font was released in 2001, designed by Northern Fonts. Because of its strong association with the Beatles, it is unlikely to be used widely outside the Beatles context. As Simon Garfield noted, “If you use the letters to spell, say, The Smiths or Coldplay, it can be rather unnerving.” If there was such a thing as a “fan font”, this would be it.
See also the movie posters for Across the Universe (2007) and Yesterday (2019) for more Beatles-related uses of the Bootle font.
The Bootle free font has only a limited character set. While it includes a second non-descending T, there is no such alternative for the big B. This can lead to unintentionally funny typography as in this title card.
The original logo in its original application, as seen in a photograph taken by Nick Newbery at a Beatles show at the King’s Hall Belfast in November 1964.
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See this thread on Twitter by Eddie Robson for more info about the Beatles logo and its appearances: