Over on his blog, feuilleton, John Coulthart has an interesting meditation on fonts, inspired by the the recently released trailer for the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and it's use of Jonathan Barnbrook’s Mason font for the titles and typography.

Distinctive fonts take a while to get around and I don’t recall seeing Mason until at least 1994. From 1995 to 2000 it began to appear everywhere, even in newspaper ads for a while, before finding a permanent place in the book world. The trouble with this kind of ubiquity is that the novelty the design once possessed quickly vanishes and it begins to runs the risk of becoming a design cliché. Many typefaces go this way especially in the publishing world where the choice of font is often dictated by genre expectations. So Orbit-B and its variants used to signify “science fiction” or “the future” in the 1970s, Caslon Antique and Farquharson frequently indicate “horror” while FF Confidential has been over-used for crime titles.

John goes on to talk a bit about why he's used the Mason font in the past, and a bit about decorative typefaces in general. An interesting discussion, well worth checking out.