A herd of cattle pause in the Cow Palace parking lot after their arrival for the 63rd annual Grand National Rodeo, Horse & Stock Show in Daly City

Introducing Moonjumper Alpha, a font inspired by ... the Cow Palace?

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2021-06-22 05:30:03

A herd of cattle pause in the Cow Palace parking lot after their arrival for the 63rd annual Grand National Rodeo, Horse & Stock Show in Daly City, Calif., on Thursday, April 3, 2008. The event runs from April 4 thru April 12. Photo by Paul Chinn / San Francisco Chronicle

Think of the Cow Palace and a flood of old school memories surface, from roller derby to Wrestlemania to the Dickens Faire and the literal livestock that inspired the name.

But since the Daly City convention hall and concert pavilion rebranded itself some time in the early 1970s, its logo has said something else: Space travel. Video games. Arcades. The Cow Palace lettering on the upper arch of the main building, with its reversible “A” and retro-futurist angles, would fit in on a Millennium Falcon control panel.

That’s the inspiration for the Moonjumper Alpha font from Ben Zotto, maker of the San Francisco street sign-inspired Fog City Gothic. It was also inspired by The Chronicle; at the end of a Fog City Gothic interview, I nominated the Cow Palace logo, “the Comic Sans of local fonts,” as a future project.