Fontspotting and Branding

Joel Friedlander has penned this fascinating article on the effects of font choices. It could even influence the outcome of this election!

Make Your Own Font

Everyone knows I'm a bit font-obsessed. So of course I'm pretty glad it's easy to make my own fonts when the notion takes me. Simply go to MyScriptFont.com, download their PDF template, print it out, write in the boxes for each letter, scan and upload. The system will process your image immediately, and you can then download and install your very own font - and share it too, if you want. The first considered use is of course to make a font with your handwriting. I've done a few of those with different thicknesses of pens - a Light, a Bold and an Extrabold, if you will. But then there are the design implications. If I couldn't find a suitable font for a design project, I have the option of creating one myself. It's not a science I know a lot about, but this template makes it possible to get fairly good results on the first try. Why not give it a go?

(Preview of the template)

The Font Room

Courtesy of Dornob, I came across this innovative decor design for a music room. Each musician and band is represented in a typographic style and some with logos.

I think I'd find this a very distracting environment! For one thing, I'd be trying to figure out what all the different fonts are. And the names written there would be running through my brain every time I set eyes on them. I guess if a musician wants to work like that, it's his prerogative!

More pictures and a video at the original post here.

Fontspotting: Comic Sans Inventor!

This is Vincent Connare. He invented Comic Sans. 

"Comic Sans looks like someone threw up on the keyboard and that's what came out," graphic designer Dave Combs told The Huffington Post.
Combs is one of the many haters of Comic Sans, a font that looks like the writing in an old-fashioned comic book, that was invented by Vincent Connare 20 years ago.
Connare knows what he did. He calls comic sans "the most hated and most loved font in the world."

However, if not for mutual hatred of the font, Dave Combs would never have met his wife! 

Watch the video at the link for the full story, and see parents teaching their kids to spot fonts. 

Whoever knew creating a font could be matchmaking??

Fontspotting: Goudy Stout

The mountain is bonus. I was waiting for a bus.

While I was searching to identify this font, I hit gold and also discovered another restaurant on Rarotonga using the same one:

The word "restaurant" in particular - possibly also "Tumunu" but if so, it's been force-squeezed a bit horizontally. It does look very similar, it's just a bit too narrow.

I've used one of the Goudy variants - GoudyCat, I think - on a book project before, but they all look fairly different. This version here certainly wouldn't have suited my science fiction book!

Fontspotting: Broadway again

Just another quick sighting of Broadway, though we already did this the other day. This was on a vege bag from Mr Wu's store on Rarotonga. Italics this time!

Fontspotting: Liddie and Liddie Black

The two Liddies were among the first widely available fonts that shipped with Windows, and they are quite classy and funky at that. Unfortunately this means they are now widely overused. Proof: I was able to find three examples in our almost bare beach rental house at Rarotonga...

 "Frangipani Fragrance" is Liddie Black...

...And so is "Coconut Tours".

The information folder has just Liddie, not Black, but you can tell it's related.

Liddie can be recognised most easily by the diagonal lines having diagonal termini - look at the tips of  the R's and A's. Oh yes, and this one is only available in capital letters, so is commonly found mixed with other fonts in a design, as above.

Fontspotting: Unknown but cool, popular on drinks

I noticed this font on a beer bottle in Rarotonga - the local brand, Matutu - and then realised it was very much like the one on our homegrown Lemon & Paeroa bottles. I pointed it out to my brother and cousin at the restaurant table, and they proceeded to recognise it and also take pictures of it. What can I say, fontspotting runs in the family...

(Of which there is incidentally also a chocolate version. Yes, it's fizzy.)

It is also suspiciously similar to the one that appears at WhatTheFont (WTF?), a site I often use to identify fonts...even ones I've used myself and forgotten the name of :P Anyway, their instructional infographic looks like this:

Okay, not exactly alike, but pretty similar characteristics...

Fontspotting: Bachelor Criteria

Not a fontspotting instance as such - bonus for you if you know what font she's talking in!

This could be a question I'd consider asking, but probably later, after I knew someone a while. Because, you know...

Fontspotting: Broadway

Highly distinctive and still popular for appropriate uses.

Fontspotting: Irish Road Signs

Placenames and street signs in Ireland are very often written in Gaelic as well as English. Interestingly, this often involves a different, more Gaelic font as well.

Fontspotting: Amphion

This sign can be found in restaurants all across America. I once used Amphion in a book trailer, and never forgot the look of it.

Fontspotting: Devinne

Devinne is on the right. I used this on Kat's book so I get embarrassed when it pops up around the place. I had never seen it before using it, honestly...

Fontspotting: Alberta

Lovely little restaurant in Cedar Rapids. Alberta is a decently smart font, even if we see it everywhere.

Fontspotting: Ignacious

Here we have three fonts on one sign. The top one may be Alberta or similar. Not sure about the bottom one, but the one in the middle is definitely Ignacious. I dislike it since using it on a project that went very askew.

Fontspotting: Mistral

Believe it or not, these are completely different establishments. Some older systems call this font Minstrel.

Fontspotting: Algerian

An intriguing mix of lettering here. The hand-painted work makes for an improvement on the vertically squashed Algerian of the main title.

Fontspotting: Bathroom Papyrus

Papyrus is a rather fancy font for a simple sign like this. Still, I suppose they had to use something.

Fontspotting: Comic Sans Sheriff

What an ignominious start to a series on fonts. But this never fails to cause a funny face.

Fontspotting

It’s a hobby of mine. Mostly it happens inside my head, because there isn’t anyone around to tell about a particularly egregious sighting. But my more geeky friends, or those who could become it or who don’t mind my showing it, may have heard me pointing out a typeface as we drive by it, or an outstanding design adaptation, or a horrendous mix-up. Once I saw seven different fonts used on one sign for one business. Seven! Can you believe it? Well, at least it wasn’t a book cover, though I’ve seen that too, and it was not pretty. That would be a curse of fatal death.

There are two main things that bother me in public font use. One is when people use really common fonts that are standard issue and way too overused. Put some effort in, people! I’m not talking about book or blog body text, those need to be clear and plain. But signs and titles are different. The other large problem is when I spot a type of lettering I’ve used myself in a design project—a book cover, a logo, a website. It was mine, dangit, and I probably spent days hunting down just the right one, only to see it grinning back at me from a car yard or restaurant sign. Well, at least those things have a limited local sphere of visibility. Mine are all over the internet, after all.