@$^& Font manipulators......

[CES020]

Was asked to remove an existing company logo from a wall and remount it to a substrate instead of directly to the wall. No problem, went by, took as many measurements as I could, lots of letters. Lots of letters. Some large, some small. Took lots of photos as well. Simple font, Times New Roman. Piece of cake, I figured.

Pulled all the letters off the wall, took them back to the shop, cut the substrate, took their logo (provided to me) and got ready to make a template.

Hey, wait a minute....their logo file isn't using the same fonts as the real logo did. Damn it.

Okay, let's move on, we can figure it out with all the dimensions I took.

Cut a template to do the placement, just a few letters to try out. Hey, wait a minute. One letter fits good, the next letter doesn't and so on. Damn it.

Got to working on it, trying to figure it out and what it appears some lemonhead did was to change the size of various fonts. For example, they took the "A" and made it about 1/8" smaller than the stock "A". They left the "O" the same size, they took the "M" and made it 1/8" shorter and then made it .140" narrower. Damn it.

Why would someone manipulate fonts to that degree? Job security? If so, it didn't work out too well for them.

In the end, I just measured all the letters and modified them to the actual height and width, and then I manually set them. It worked out well and I still made decent money on it, but it wasn't pretty there for a hour or two

If I ever get my hands on that person, I'm going to offer them a high paying job, just long enough to get them to quit their current job. Then, I'm going to let them work one day, pay them, and tell them it's not working out and fire them

 

[tanneji]

haha thats ridiculous. I can't stand that mess. We have one now that needs an exact match and its exactly like TNR but the w has a spike in the middle instead of the plateau. I think it was custom and its insane.

 

[Pat Whatley]

Different versions of the same fonts. We used to have two fonts named HELVETICA that were almost identical but certain letters would be ever so slightly different.

 

[OldPaint]

most old SIGN ARTISTS.........took what is called "artistic freedom" when doing jobs.
YEA....it is sorta job security, and anyone who tries to copy it.........WILL HAVE THE PROBLEM YOUR HAVING.
whats really cool............when YOU CAN look at someones work.......AND KNOW WHO PAINTED IT...by their letter style.......or to have to COPY it EXACTLY............did this on many old vehicle signs, where one door needed to match the other side.......so your sayin......... if it aint whats in the computer.......you cant COPY IT?

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Like Pat Whatley said. Almost every font in the corel library is different than the equivalent Adobe/Linotype equivalent. Zurich is supposed to be Univers, Swiss is Helvetica, Zapf Humanist is Optima, Calligraphic 801 is Palatino, and so on

However for someone who works all day long on matching logos/lettering exactly, I should know. When I superimpose a font over existing art I can see that one or the other is used. To the naked eye the 2 fonts are identical but there are quite a few detail differences. I guess that is how Bitstream was able to copy all of those fonts... by changing some details and renaming them

 

[OldPaint]

hers a couple good examples....of "artist freedom" no 2 are exactly alike.

 

[CES020]

OP, I'm all with you on the hand done stuff, but these were cutout letters, cutout on a router and a laser so we're not talking old school hand drawing of fonts here.

Any of you aware of variations of Times New Roman? I've not seen a variation of that.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Yes, Times has differences from TNR.

 

[Rodi]

Time Roman was made by Monotype, however, Allied Corporation (who owned Linotype at one time) owned the rights then Monotype came out with Times New Roman. It is also called Nimbus Roman (URW), Dutch 801.