Calling all typographers

Paul Koning paulkoning at comcast.net
Thu Apr 28 10:07:14 CDT 2016


> On Apr 28, 2016, at 10:37 AM, schoedel at kw.igs.net wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:19:43 +0100, Rod Smallwood wrote
>> But they built it out of circles and straight lines and that's what I do.
> 
> That's superficially, but not exactly, true. Even the 'o' is not a perfect 
> circle, and you can't get close to replicating the 's' or the digits that way.
> 
> I took a stab at replicating the 'classic dec' font about a decade ago, following 
> scanned DEC manuals wherever possible. I built up most of the basic ASCII set in 
> the outline form before suspending the project. (I suspect the solid form can 
> mostly be derived from paths through the middle of the outline strokes.) It did 
> get used a few years ago by our Jason T for some VCF Midwest graphics - 
> https://picasaweb.google.com/102190732096693814506/VCFMW50OfficialGraphics#551251
> 2730455260610

Neat.  I did the same many years ago, using CorelDraw as a very poor man's font maker, but it was just good enough to create the basic outlines.  I call the font "Handbook" and I've sent out TTF files of it at times.  I can do so again if anyone wants it.  It has no kerning in it (no support for that in CorelDraw).  I could probably add those with a better font editor.

The samples you pointed to don't take into account that there are two versions of f and t and r -- one for end of word that has the long curl in your design, and one for mid-word that has a shorter curl.

	paul



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