Famous for his hand drawn movie titles in the 1940’s and 50’s, Wendt was an old school ‘commercial artist’ (there weren’t graphic designers in those days) plying his trade in a booming Hollywood, creating typography for some of the top movies of the day.

This was back in the day where everything like this had to be hand drawn – here’s just a couple of great examples, including one of my favourite films of all time, Casablanca. I think they are lovely examples of craft and although the styling reflects the fevered, pulpy subject matter of the day, they still stand the test of time for me and act as a perfect design time capsule.

It wasn’t that long ago – when I started out in the design industry, OK so it is some time ago – that anything unusual had to be drawn especially and we had a ‘lettering artist’ and in our PFB studio we had a couple of guys who could knock something similar up using nothing more than a few sable brushes and indian ink.

Those were the days.