Tech: Where to find old fonts?

Subject: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 03:00 PM

Where to find old fonts?

I happened to be in a restaurant the other day that was decorated with antiques. It had some framed architectural drawings on the wall from the 1880's. I wasn't interested in the drawings so much as the lettering. It was beautiful. Architects often like to label their drawings in beautiful and unique styles of lettering, but this was really distinctive.

I have also seen lettering on old sheet music that was quite attractive.

It strikes me that we have a lot of computer-literate folkies here who would probably like to do up their own brochures, posters, CD inserts, etc.—and since many of us perform old music, it would be appropriate to have an old typeface to go with it. But where do you get the fonts?

I have dabbled a bit in calligraphy myself, but I lack the skill to reproduce these by hand.

I once bought a CD-ROM containing "500 TrueType Fonts" or some such, but they were disappointing. None of them looked very old.

I know there are lots of web sites that let you download free fonts, but I don't know how to search for what I want, since I don't know the names of these old fonts.

Can anyone help?

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: GUEST,Ian
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 03:08 PM

Not sure exactly what you want, but these Historical Fonts might be of use?

Ian

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 03:14 PM

Any time I've needed fonts About.com seems to have more than I could even consider. Just type "fonts" in the search box. About.com

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 03:29 PM

I used to be a typographer -- now I'm a "digital pre-press production tech." I think you've also probably found out that most of the free fonts have problems printing -- even if you can find what you want. Because I'm a graphics professional, I use PostScript fonts by reputable type "foundries" (yeah, I think some of them are still calling themselves that) exclusively.

You can browse the catalogs online at ITC, Adobe, Bitstream, Monotype, Font Haus, etc. to see what fonts are available and a substantial amount of them were originally designed between the 1500s (Garamond), the 1700s (Baskerville -- John Baskerville was loathed by other printers because he designed revolutionary types that necessitated new techniques in making smoother paper), through to the types used by Ottmar Merganthaler in the Linotype machines. I'm particularly partial to everything Frederick Goudy designed except Copperplate Gothic.

There are also newer fonts designed to look like fonts architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Macintosh used.

But I think what you're looking for are more like the examples in turn of the century (1900) type speciman books put out by various foundries and that's rather hit or miss. And if there's a new version, it's not necessarily called the same thing the original was. (As a matter of fact, a lot of fonts are variations of each other, sometimes different proprietary typesetting or foundry variants on classic fonts or somebody ripping off a font by changing a few strokes or punctuation characters.)

I can help you identify what you're trying to match and make suggestions as to what fonts will work. PM me -- send me some photocopies or scan them and send me a JPEG.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 03:36 PM

Knowing the names of the fonts won't help much; most of the good fonts have several names because of the nutty copyright laws. You can copyright the name of a font, but not the font itself, so people just rip off the font and issue it under a new name. Best thing would be to go through the links on the site Ian sent and look at samples; most of them give you samples. I've made fonts from Dover type books by scanning pages, autotracing in Freehand or Illustrator and putting them through an old copy of Fontographer. It's not hard (if you have the programs) but it's tedious as hell. You can email me at [e-mail] if I can help more. Be warned; like most graphics people I use a Mac.

Clint Keller

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Deckman
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 03:45 PM

Hi Jim ... "Bride Judy" is a Calligrapher. She's very good, but then ... I'm somewhat preduced. She does only the hand calligraphy. I just showed her your query. I think that in a little while, she will write you an answer as to her resources from her extensive library. By the way, in our house we have created a VERB form of CALLIGRAPHY. It is ... CALLIGAL ... meaning to do calligraphy. Doesn't that make sense to you? You might also appreciate that she her business name is "The Write Touch!" (get it ... a little play on words ... Oh, never mind!CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 03:52 PM

Here are some interesting ones - Black Chancery is one I like.

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 04:13 PM

Like Clint Keller above, I'm Mac -- but if you need PC fonts, I can point you to them.

Hmmm . . . to calligraph (or not to calligraph; that is the question) or "I calligulated last night."

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Deckman
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 04:56 PM

Before I met Bride Judy, I had never Calligeled well! Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Deckman
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 05:09 PM

O.K. John, here is Bride Judy's serious answer. And as she is being serious, I s'pose I'll have to try also. But I do want you to realize that this is the week of Don Firths 71st BIRTHDAY PARTY ... and it's being very hard to be serious.

From Bride Judy ..."I'm a calligrapher and I have found the SPEEDBALL TEXTBOOKS to be helpful for styles. DOVER publishes a number of inexpensive Calligraphy books. My great find, tho, is "STUDIO HANDBOOK" ... Letter and Design ... Hand Lettered ... Copyrite 1927. Antique stores are good for searches.

So, Jon, that's my LAST serious posting for the day. May I now get back to the serious business of being silly, because it's Don Firth's 71st birthday this week ... and beside ... he's running a campaign for the MAYOR OF MUDCAT! YIPPEE! Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 06:21 PM

Calligraph: transitive verb. "To write beautifully or ornamentally." OED.
Black Chancery is one of my favorites too. It is in the Historical site (guest Ian) and in the fonts site suggested by McGrath. There might be slight differences in the two. Of the many in MS Word (some ridiculous), Old English is close but simpler.
Newspapers in the late 1800s used a simple font design for articles but had a variety of fonts for headings to advertisements, announcements and special sections.
Those used on sheet music, brochures, prominent advertisements etc. were often created by an artist-calligrapher like "Bride Judy" and were quite distinctive or even unique.

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 06:27 PM

Well, if you really want to get fancy, try http://www.emigre.com. My son works for them - that's all they do is design and sell fonts, and they seem to make big bucks doing it.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: GUEST,open mike
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 06:41 PM

i kgot some runic fonts, most especially Elder Futhark, in a true type format on the web--seems like clark was the name of the guy who was the source...oh my, i seem to have forgotten the actual source--but another interesting type of alphabet is the ogham--Ancient irish stick figures.. oh yes, curtis clark--here are some links: http://www.irminsul.org/ru/ru.html http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/runes.html http://www.aotea.org/work/rune/ http://members.aol.com/celticearth/hallofcelticart.html i do not thnk you actually meant OLD as in prehistoric, but here might befound some fun links... happy scribing, scribbling and calligiggling..

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: allie kiwi
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 06:46 PM

I like the celtic style fonts at this site : Font Invasion

Allie

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 08:47 PM

allie kiwi, quite a mixture of fonts at that site. Mix and match, but it works.

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 10:23 PM

I spent 2+ years collecting fonts...from freeware web sites and from the newsgroup alt.binaries.fonts. I suppose I have 7000 or more on CDs

If you describe a little more what you might want, I can post some GIF images of some...(if any of the websites mentioned have anything similar, direct me there)

There are "Blackletter" types, circus poster types, cursive scripts, elegant things with loops & whirls, etc...'old' just doesn't tell us enough..*grin*

I'll see if I can post some samples soon...you might see something that rings a bell.

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 11:04 PM

by the way...what operating system do you have? WIN98 comes with a lot of fonts....

also, and sort of important, do you have a standalone program especially for viewing/installing fonts?

There is fine FREE one called "The Font Thing" at

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~scef/

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Jim Krause
Date: 24 Jun 02 - 11:47 PM

If you're looking for 18^th and 19^th century fonts, check out Walden Fonts. They also have Medieval scripts, German Fraktur, and more. Quite a few re-enactment groups make use of their products.
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 25 Jun 02 - 09:55 AM

If you want to do a search for fonts on the web, I always have good luck with "freeware + fonts". TrueType usually gives the best results.

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 25 Jun 02 - 11:28 AM

Thanks, everybody, for all the suggestions and information. I will check out all the web sites you have mentioned.

To be honest, I don't have any specific purpose in mind right now, so there's no need for anyone to go to any trouble on my behalf. I just enjoy fooling around with fonts. Maybe someday I will make a poster for my wife's band, or for some other musician friends, but they're not exactly clamoring for my help.

To clarify: I am NOT interested in learning how to hand-letter these fonts, or having anyone else do that for me. And at this point, I don't want to spend any money on it either. And I don't have a very clear idea of what I want, and even if I did have a clear idea, I probably wouldn't know the words to describe it! But maybe I will learn something from looking at those web sites.

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Mountain Dog
Date: 25 Jun 02 - 02:43 PM

Hi, Jim

Another source worth a look is Dave Nalle's Scriptorium website; lots of different styles, but he has a particular fondness for decorative fonts based on turn of the (last) century lettering. Dave takes great pains with his work and you're likely to find much to delight you as you wander through his little patch of the internet.

You'll find the Scriptorium here if I haven't lost my blue-clicky touch.

Enjoy! (and thanks to all the rest of you who've pointed me toward new sources for fonts - always looking for new things to use in our writing/design/communications projects!)

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Jun 02 - 05:44 AM

In an Old Fonts home...

Sorry Jim, couldn't resist.

Cheers

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 26 Jun 02 - 07:00 AM

Those of you who are Mac-only must be on fairly old machines if they won't handle PC stuff. I use QuarkXpress, Photoshop and Illustrator on both, and to all intents and purposes cross-platform issues are now a thing aof the past. I switched largely to PCs when Macs kept crashing, and the company didn't know where it was going. I doubt if there's anything a Mac can do that can't be done as well on a PC so I suppose it's fashion or elitism that keeps Macs in business.

Subject: RE: BS: Help: Where to find old fonts?
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 26 Jun 02 - 02:48 PM

Fionn: I'm probably out of date, been retired a couple of years, but my problem was with PC's that wouldn't handle Mac stuff, rather than vice versa. I used to have to translate fonts for the PC people. Off thread, I suppose, but I'm a little stung by that "fashion or elitism" remark. Got into Macintosh with a fat mac about 1985 or '86 when it was the only real graphics machine, as it was for a long time after, and have stayed with it on the principle "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Inertia maybe, fashon, no. And the elitism I encountered came from the PC-loving computer section where I worked: When I brought my Mac into work the head of the computer section laughed out loud at it, and then complained about them for the next 15 years after the whole Information Department switched to them.

Clint Keller