I want to identify a specific font. It is for the Carolina Trucking Company. Here is a link to a picture. OTOH, how can you identify any font that you want to use? Are some artists, advertisers, etc. so familiar that they know the name of hundreds of fonts just by sight? Or do you put the font on some font identifying machine. (That last seems unlikely.) I want to get these fonts or some similar substitute to make signs, decals, etc. for my home layout. It is not for commercial purposes.
Well. Check this out. I still can't identify it. How about this one? You have to join to get some of the information. Still can't identify it.
I hate to say it, but this may not be any commonly available typeface. This may have been created by the company itself.
I went through around 80 questions about that font and it narrowed it down to 30 possible fonts based on my answers. I looked at each one. The closest were Copperplate and ITC Newtext, in my opinion. Still, neither of these was as "fat" nor as thick. Identifont - Copperplate (URW)
I dragged out three old books of graphic alphabets from the 1960s... Prestype, artype and FORMATT. None quite like your lettering.
Ozymandias Outline WBW is close, but not quite. Probably were from custom made stencils, based on some older style.
Well I went through my hundreds of fonts and nothing is exact. I do think it's a logo, not just type. And it's not in http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/ I played around with a couple likely candidates. Copperplate bold was used in this attempt. I modified the kerning (gap spacing) and then stretched the width but not the height. And then outlined it. I think it would pass the three foot rule, especially in N scale. Especially if there's no Carolina Trucking vehicles nearby.
I am thinking that it was probably based on a stencil that the local sign painter had at the time. The spacing is all weird, for one thing.
Good info from TB members! Good point and you are probably correct. Many signs that are often repeated are stenciled and do not fit the "font" definition. That means I will have to just search through a few hundred items to find something close. I have joined one of the groups above and have submitted this sign to "experts" to get their opinion. I will report if I do get any answers. Great. That is some good info...copperplate bold. Also, the only other Carolina vehicles nearby will have the same lettering. Thanks very much for this help! :thumbs_up:
More or less. Probably not hundreds, though. I can identify about 50 by sight, after working in the field for 45 years. And I can get close on about 50 more, or at least close enough to limit my search. Some font directories are more or less progressive, so getting close usually helps. What you are showing is not any font that I recognize. I suspect, like others, that it is home-grown. PRR, BTW, had their own font and stencils. But if I stretch Palatino a bit in width, many of the characters are spot on. I think I used the small-capital version of the font.
I should add that many fonts are derivations of other fonts. So if you get to Old Century Schoolbook, Caslon is not that far removed, IIRC. I don't have any font books with me, so that is a guess. There are, sort of, families of fonts. So Old Century Schoolbook has spawned a number of derivatives.
At this time, let me add identifying this font is no longer required for my purposes. I have identified several processes that will allow me to make a precise digital drawing of this logo. Primarily it is a process of manually tracing the letters into a design program. When I get it finished, I will post it here. Still, identifying a font is a good thing if it is possible to do so. It sure can save a lot of time.
Yeah, tracing this in Illustrator or Corel will be the way to go. Here's a link to a font identification engine that has worked for me in the past: Find Fonts, Try Fonts, Buy Fonts MyFonts
This type face may be in the Cheltenham font family. Have you Googled "font"? There are hundreds of fonts, some that can be used free of charge. I also Google to find illustrations for various sizes of signs and banners to identify various businesses. Often these are of the wrong size so I print what I need, size them (example: reduce them to 55 to fit a particular sign), then take them to my friendly printer. I have an old round, plastic wheel which, before I retired, I used to resize things for publications or ads. The wheel comes in handy now that I'm gainfully unemployed.
Try this forum for a font Id: WhatTheFont! MyFonts You'll get emailed when people post replies. Also, Illustrator has a function that will trace an item and turn it into a vector drawing. Once it's a vector item you can scale to any size you want without degradation. I can't remember the vector function name but it will be faster than tracing it by hand.
I have bookmarked all these web sites. If you need to identify a font, these are good places to try to do that. Here is the Carolina decal I made.
Hard to tell. The Carolina Freight Carriers company was founded in 1937 in west NC, so they might have had a local sign painter do his best on their first truck, and they stuck with that. Usually, though, when company wants a corporate logo, they hire a designer to make up a logo using existing art (clip art) and fonts (Helvetica or Times, anyone?) or they have the designer create a new font and art. The great thing about creating your own font is you own the copyright (if you did up the contract with the designer correctly) and determine who can use your font-it's a licensed art work. Large companies like GM, Ford, GE, Toyota all have their own internal font that they use on all their materials. These fonts are generally NEVER made available to the public. If you are contracted to produce work using a licensed font, you must make sure you have legal approval in writing, less the company accuse you of theft when you submit the design and demand all your art work as compensation-it's happened. This also is why UP and the other knuckle draggers were able to Lord over royalty payment demands to Athearn and the other model producers a few years back. "That's our logo and you never received written permission-pay up!". So, I suspect this is a licensed font that is not available to the general public and you will have to substitute a similar font. Given the black outline on the red letters, the shape of the serifs on the letters and the weight of the text and spacing (yes, SteamDonkey-the letters are spaced that way for a reason), they paid real money to get this logo-not the local sign jock-IMHO. You do not want to engage in the fresh heck that is creating a font. But if you really do, I have some left over Strathmore board and black gauche you can play with. Ascenders, mean lines and serifs..oh my!
Here's a tip for fontwork, to better flip through what you have. Open up MS Paint, insert a textbox, type your phrase, and highlight it. Then click the font on the text toolbar, and as long as the font in the text toolbar is highlighted in the blue, you can use the up and down arrow keys to scroll between fonts, and MS paint will automatically change your highlighted typing to that font. You extra clicking, just flip back and forth between the onts on your computer until you find one that is close enough. Now, it odes only work for fonts you have downloaded, but I've found that doing my decals for the Ringling Train, fonts on MS Word don't look right on their previews, but this way seems to trick the mind enough
Other Drawing Programs? Flashwave: Any idea if the Gimp drawing program or others will do that? Sounds like an excellent idea for previewing and selecting fonts.
Beautifully done, Flash. And now for something completely different: http://cheeseorfont.mogrify.org/ This is a game, or time-waster. Afficionados of either fonts or cheeses will enjoy it.
