In the opening scene of P.T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights, the camera swoops down on the titular club. The last time I saw it, I realized that I knew the typeface on the club’s storefront from somewhere. It was the same font that the NFL’s Miami Dolphins used in their script logo throughout the 1980s and into the 90s. Even now, they use a modified version of it. Check out a side-by-side comparison after the jump.
First, the Boogie Nights sign:
And now the classic Dolphins script logo:
The top swoosh encircling the “D” in Dolphins and the bottom swoosh on the “B” in Boogie is exactly the same. The lower-case “o” has the same slightly askew, almost italic shape. And the “h” is almost spot-on, with the up-tick on the front end a little more pronounced in the Dolphins logo. On the whole, it is admittedly not a perfect match. But wherever the two respective designers ended up, they clearly both started in the same place, with one or the other or both making only slight modifications. For instance, the massive drop shadow on the Dolphins logo is an obvious change.
I shouldn’t find this so funny, but I do. I imagine most NFL teams don’t want their brand associated with porn, and yet here it is through some happy accident that the two are linked. Who would’ve thought that Jack Horner and Don Shula could ever be mentioned in the same sentence.