Visual & Thematic Alignment

GT Cinetype was selected as the primary typeface, chosen for its technical and historical specificity, which aligns with the film’s interplay between archival material and contemporary footage. Originally based on a design engineered for a cinema subtitling machine. the typefaces was engineered for a laser-etching process that could only produce straight lines, resulting in a typeface devoid of curves. This mechanical restriction became an aesthetic statement for GT Cinetype—one that carries both the nostalgia of film history and the precision of structured sports typography.

GT Cinetype’s rigid geometry echoes the typography often seen in stadium environments—on goal numbers, race clocks, and signage—making it a fitting reference to the world of competitive sports. But more than just a visual match, the typeface also connects conceptually to the documentary’s interplay between past and present. Since subtitles were historically produced using this technology, the type subtly reinforces the film’s archival moments while remaining contemporary and assertive.

The choice of typeface responds to the film’s challenge to conventional sports narratives. In competitive athletics, typographic design is often rigid, institutional, and exclusionary—mirroring the systems that police gender in sports. By repurposing a typeface originally meant for another function (cinematic subtitling) into a space dominated by strict athletic type traditions, the design itself enacts a form of quiet resistance.

The typography was deployed in a way that felt both structured and adaptable, much like the film’s protagonists who navigate—and ultimately redefine—spaces of competition. Set against the backdrop of the Olympic Stadium, the text carries the weight of institutional authority while subtly undermining it by placing queer athletes at its center.

By choosing a typeface linked to cinematic history and recontextualizing it within the realm of sports, the title design serves as an understated yet powerful commentary on visibility and reclamation. Much like the documentary itself, it finds power in the subversion of expectation, reimagining what competition and victory can mean outside of rigid binaries.