Fonts!

[lazyhour]

Font nerd WLTM others.

Aren't fonts brilliant?  Is the font face one of the first things you notice on film posters and CD sleeves? Do you despair of Comic Sans?  Are you amused by the ubiquity of Helvetica?*

What are your favourite fonts?  What are your favourite examples of great fontery?

Woody Allen picked a peach with EF Windsor Light Condensed:


The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds sleeve wouldn't have been the same without Cooper Black:


The Black Keys have gone down the same road:


Finally, a plea: can anyone tell me of a font that's close to this beauty?




*These people are.

[lazyhour]

As this thread is already a clear smash, I have an addendum: has anyone here made their own fonts?  Can you recommend (free) font-making software?  Ideally one that can convert images of letters into vector fonts, so you could get an old poster, scan it, and make fonts out of it, if such software exists.

[Uncle TechTip]

You say that the Beach boys album wouldn't be what it is without that font - it would be interesting to mock up something with Arial and see if that's really true.

I like Century Gothic cos it reminds me of TV-am.

[HAYRDRYAH]

Finally, a plea: can anyone tell me of a font that's close to this beauty?

Close, rather than exact? Try URW Garamond Narrow Medium Oblique, but in your example it's more about wild swashes and swollen characters than the face itself. Play around with the glyphs in Illustrator until they look fucking ludicrous.

You might also find the Souvenir family useful, particularly if you're writing a book of Slo-Cooker recipes.

As this thread is already a clear smash, I have an addendum: has anyone here made their own fonts?  Can you recommend (free) font-making software?  Ideally one that can convert images of letters into vector fonts, so you could get an old poster, scan it, and make fonts out of it, if such software exists.

FontLab are your friends. Not for free, though, unless you know where to look.

[greencalx]

Finally, a plea: can anyone tell me of a font that's close to this beauty?

Hmm, Identifont didn't help out much - though perhaps I answered some of the questions wrong.  (Do 'Search by appearance').

[lazyhour]

Thanks you two for your advice. It is the curly capitals that I'm most interested in, really.

Looking again, I should've gone with my gut instinct, which would have been to ask about the original English font:


Mmm, look at it!

While I'm here, the repeating sleeve design contains another font I love (image upped by our 23 Daves, it turns out!):

[alan nagsworth]

Tell you what I fucking hate?! Grungy fonts that have the same letter twice in a word, like on a gig flyer when you see (for example; not a real observation) DJ BILLY in a font that is supposed to look like it's had the crap kicked out of it, but both L characters, right next to each other, have the exact same weathered look. It's cheap and nasty is what it is.

[CollaterlySisters]

Albertus always makes me smile, because it reminds me I'm in 'The Village'...
& more helpfully Marlon's font might be ITC Bookman? http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?pid=44276 (I remember when Letraset came in catalogues, & I had to cut & paste by hand)

[An tSaoi]

both L characters, right next to each other, have the exact same weathered look. It's cheap and nasty is what it is.

I'd extend that to any use of a font for something that's supposed to be handwritten/written in blood splatter etc.

[alan nagsworth]

It's crap isn't it! Drives me bonkers, and my mate is similarly pedantic about the whole thing. I'd honestly rather see it done in Impact than that rubbish. If you're professional enough why not vector the font and warp one of the letters slightly? Bah!

[Fawwaz]

Hear hear! The faux-grungy font revolution starts here brothers.

Of course the greatest font crime is using Microsoft WordArt. For ages I thought that was the reserve of primary school teachers from 1998, but it seems that some people are still using it. I've seen it in doctors' waiting rooms and shops and everything.

[An tSaoi]

You say that the Beach boys album wouldn't be what it is without that font - it would be interesting to mock up something with Arial and see if that's really true.

Or even worse:

[Rowlands]

I once received a rejection letter in response to a job application which was written in the comic sans font. That reassured me that they weren't worth working for in the first place.

[Lfbarfe]

While I'm here, the repeating sleeve design contains another font I love (image upped by our 23 Daves, it turns out!):

Derek Italic. No free versions around, so I bought it for something like 25 quid. Worth every penny.

[alan nagsworth]

Hear hear! The faux-grungy font revolution starts here brothers.

Of course the greatest font crime is using Microsoft WordArt. For ages I thought that was the reserve of primary school teachers from 1998, but it seems that some people are still using it. I've seen it in doctors' waiting rooms and shops and everything.

You think that's bad? I work in a four-star hotel and only up until last year when they drastically revamped their image were they still using that fucking shit. They still have no god damned clue nowadays, to be honest. I noticed the other day on the huge flat screen TV on which they display the day's conferences/weddings/promotions, there was a slide on the .pps document advertising a meal in the restaurant, and the restaurant name has the red squiggly 'spelling error' line beneath it. I wish I was joking. We charge a maximum of £170 to stay in our most privileged suites and we can't hire a decent graphic designer. I'd do it for an extra £2 an hour.

[Uncle TechTip]

What's the name of that classic 1960s font that turned up everywhere in shop windows, shop signage, in press ads and everywhere? There are two examples in Manchester that still survive, I think - Granada Dry Cleaners on Bridge St (best view here thanks to crap Street view) and atop the Granada building on Quay St - obviously the one-time Granada corporate typeface.

[Guy]

Reinforced Concrete Oblique

_{I made that up, I don't know, sorry.}

[HAYRDRYAH]

Isn't it the same Egyptian slab drawn for the Festival of Britain?

English display letterforms of the early nineteenth century had been rediscovered and revived, above all in the pages of the Architectural Review. Members of the journal's editorial group (directed and intellectually fed by its presiding genius H. de Cronin Hastings) recognized the presence of these letterforms in the architecture of Britain.* At that time, as even still now, one only had to walk around any town to find lettering that is (as far as anything is) native to the Isles: the term English Vernacular was later used to describe the loosely related forms that cannot really be termed a style, more an approach and an attitude: informality, vigour, with a willingness to let forms develop without reference to the (at that time hazily perceived) classical Roman norms. It was this interest in the local tradition that provided a pool of knowledge and examples that were picked up by the Festival's designers, via the recommendations of its 'typography panel'. The most typical Festival letter was the sloping Egyptian (so-called) – derived from nineteenth-century English models. It was this letterform that was used for the main signs on the RFH: on the river side (looking to the north-west) and on the other side (looking to the south-east).


^{Festival lettering, as reproduced in Nicolete Gray's Lettering on buildings (1960).}

*Hugh Casson is quoted as saying of Hastings: 'He was my guru and certainly the guru of the South Bank Exhibition'. See the very informative article by Susan Lasdun, 'H. de C. reviewed', Architectural Review, September 1996. Her text is available via findarticles.com.

In 1953–4, the AR published a series of articles by Nicolete Gray, including one on 'Egyptians', which she later resumed in her Lettering on buildings (London: Archtectural Press, 1960). A letter (15 November 1959) from Charles Hasler to her suggests that Gray cannot have been part of the inner circle shaping lettering policy on the South Bank (in his article in Twentieth Century no. 5, Paul Rennie writes that she was a member of the Festival 'typography panel'). But her earlier work, notably the book Nineteenth century ornamented types and title pages (London: Faber & Faber, 1938), had laid foundations for the Festival's typography; and it was indeed reprinted in that year. (Hasler's letter to Gray is now in the Central Lettering Record at Central Saint Martins, London.)

[kittens]

I've noticed a number of independently owned shops using the font 'Chiller' for their main sign. I really don't understand the message they're trying to convey.

[Ocho]

What's the name of that classic 1960s font that turned up everywhere in shop windows, shop signage, in press ads and everywhere?

That Granada one is Stymie Black Italic - you can get most of the Stymie family here http://www.fontyukle.com/en/1,stymie but for the full Granada effect, you'll just have to find your own way of italicizing Stymie Extra Bold.  The more famous Granada typeface is Clarendon, which they used from 1969 onwards.

I must echo Mr. Barfe in endorsing Derek Italic, it just screams 1960 at me, the same way Eurostile Extended screams 1968 for some reason.

Bookman Swash as seen in the Last Tango poster is the definitive 70s compilation typeface to me, thanks to the "World Of..." series from Decca.



And should I mention?

[lazyhour]

Bookman Swash is lovely, so thanks for that!

Judiciously used Caslon Initials (in conjunction with regular Adobe Caslon for lower-case letters) do the job too:



The A, B, D, H, K and R are particularly nice.

kittens, is this the Chiller you mean?



It looks like the kind of thing cafes and chocolatiers would use.  Crappy font!