[HN Gopher] The hardest working font in Manhattan
___________________________________________________________________
The hardest working font in Manhattan
Author : robinhouston
Score : 698 points
Date : 2025-02-14 21:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aresluna.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (aresluna.org)
| randomcatuser wrote:
| I love how image-centric the blog layout is...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Too bad it needlessly hijacks the history.
| jen729w wrote:
| You'll enjoy Marcin Wichary's work. He recently travelled
| Australia and found instances of Gorton everywhere.
|
| https://mastodon.online/@mwichary/111700218511462472
|
| https://shifthappens.site/
| hampelm wrote:
| Aresluna is Marcin :-)
| jen729w wrote:
| LOL. Really? Presumably there's a term of art for that.
|
| Ah yeah his name's right there at the top... :facepalm:
| somanyphotons wrote:
| Where can we download this font?
| larodi wrote:
| i took this
|
| https://github.com/dakotafelder/open-gorton
| dsr_ wrote:
| But as anyone who finished the article knows, that's Gorton
| Modified. Check the 3, 7 and Q.
| jwagenet wrote:
| https://webonastick.com/fonts/routed-gothic/
|
| Also links a number of variations.
|
| Another font is "Simplex", which I think is often still found
| in CAD products.
| fanf2 wrote:
| You can get Marcin Wichary's version from
| https://shifthappens.site/store/
|
| Routed Gothic is a fairly good free version
| https://webonastick.com/fonts/routed-gothic/
|
| The national park typeface is another pantograph router style
| font https://nationalparktypeface.com/
| computerfriend wrote:
| Gorton Digital (https://github.com/drdnar/GortonDigital) seems
| like a faithful reproduction.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| The ANSI Y14.2 committee has a version of the font available
| for download here, created by Peter Karnold.
|
| https://cstools.asme.org/csconnect/CommitteePages.cfm?Commit...
| 60654 wrote:
| I'm afraid the author has it backwards. This style of writing
| didn't start as a font from some company.
|
| This is just how you used to be taught to do lettering in a
| drafting class. The straight lines and simple shapes make it easy
| to do lettering with pencil or a pen, which is also why all the
| lines are the same width and all the line caps are rounded.
|
| Later on these turned into stencils, which let users do lettering
| quickly by tracing the pen inside the stencil - and then turned
| into fonts for use in print. But all that came later. What we
| have here is just lettering people learned in drafting classes,
| and which was later used to make stencils and templates.
| xnx wrote:
| > The straight lines and simple shapes make it easy to do
| lettering with pencil or a pe
|
| I'm guessing these letters are also easy to create with a CNC
| machine.
|
| (Now that the page has loaded I see he identifies engraving
| machines.)
| cluckindan wrote:
| You need to actually read the article before commenting.
| taurknaut wrote:
| Nah, I just tried and it works fine.
| 60654 wrote:
| I did...?
| Clamchop wrote:
| The article goes into almost tedious detail about where it
| came from, and whether it constitutes a "proper" font. I
| think you may have skimmed too fast.
| 60654 wrote:
| That's an assumption, I read it just fine. :) I just
| disagree with how the author keeps talking about
| draftsman's lettering as if it were some company's font
| (e.g. Gorton and Leroy) rather than a commonly taught
| community standard.
| fyrn_ wrote:
| They do later talk about the real origin in 1894 in
| England, with TT&H creating it due to the constraints of
| their self-built lettering machine to engrave tiny
| letters on their products
| tmoertel wrote:
| As I mention in a previous comment [1], this style of
| hand lettering was common in textbooks prior to 1894.
| From 1883, for example, we find this specimen in
| _Standard Lettering_ , published by the Columbia School
| of Drafting:
|
| https://archive.org/details/standardletterin00claf/page/4
| 2/m...
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43055792
| yuriks wrote:
| And again, the article explicitly mentions that, with a
| picture of a similar book:
|
| > I don't know how this first proto-Gorton was designed -
| unfortunately, Taylor, Taylor & Hobson's history seems
| sparse and despite personal travels to U.K. archives, I
| haven't found anything interesting - but I know simple
| technical writing standards existed already, and likely
| influenced the appearance of the newfangled routing font.
| tmoertel wrote:
| The issue is that the author presents the entire set of
| typefaces that are similar to Gorton as derived from
| Gorton without presenting evidence to rule out the
| obvious alternative lineage: that, just like genuine
| Gorton, they too were derived from the various regional
| single-stroke letterforms that draftsman everywhere were
| taught and used. Excellent draftsman's examples abounded
| and would have been so much more common than genuine
| Gorton and its genuine ancestors that it's hard to
| believe that regional companies marketing their own type
| engraving machines would have had to copy Gorton rather
| than local examples of the draftsman's art that were
| considered superior.
| fasola wrote:
| The article has a link to the licensing agreement between
| Taylor Hobson and Gorton, links to other posts explaining
| how Leroy bought Gorton machines, an interactive
| comparison where you can see the similarity of the
| letters, and dozens of photos and scans of docs where you
| can compare them yourself, too. I would say that is a lot
| of evidence presented.
| adrian_b wrote:
| As a child, I have learned lettering based on the German
| DIN standards (DIN 16, DIN 17, DIN 1451).
|
| While these standards date from around 1930, they were
| based on much older lettering textbooks. The oldest that
| I have seen was from 1871, and these German textbooks did
| not differ much from the American textbooks quoted above.
| swores wrote:
| I just read the article in full, and don't understand
| your point, either.
|
| Maybe you could explain what part of the comment you
| replied to you think is either wrong or already covered
| by the article, so that either we can realise what we
| failed to notice in our first reading or so someone can
| explain to you why you're wrong in thinking that comment
| isn't correct in the context of having read the full
| article :)
| detourdog wrote:
| I'm sure it started as an oral tradition based on
| legibility. The communicating new ideas about physical
| objects on paper is difficult and I was taught that is
| was a lesson on clarity. Codifying best practices is what
| cultures do as they evolve.
| opello wrote:
| While I can appreciate the parent commenter's criticism,
| I think the author tried to head it off with this
| concession of their chosen naming convention:
|
| > In the end, I'm sticking with Gorton for the whole
| branch since that feels the most well-known name, but I
| feel ill-equipped to make that call for everyone. You
| might choose to call it Gorton, Leroy, TT&H, Taylor-
| Hobson, or one of the many other names. (Just, ideally,
| not Linetica.)
|
| Since the author was concentrated on the particular
| letterforms that seemed more consistent in the lineage
| observed, the usage makes sense. But that naming, even
| with the acknowledgement that it likely comes from the
| standards of drafting of the day:
|
| > I don't know how this first proto-Gorton was designed -
| unfortunately, Taylor, Taylor & Hobson's history seems
| sparse and despite personal travels to U.K. archives, I
| haven't found anything interesting - but I know simple
| technical writing standards existed already, and likely
| influenced the appearance of the newfangled routing font.
|
| > This was perhaps the first modern pantograph engraver,
| and perhaps even the arrival of a concept of an engraving
| font - the first time technical writing was able to be
| replicated consistently via the aid of the machine.
|
| But it also seems a reasonable critique of the article
| that it's mislabeling to call the MIL-SPEC-33558 and ANSI
| Y14.2M or even the WWII equipment lettering "Gorton"
| simply by visual similarity without evidence to show
| ancestry to the specific engraving machines, dies, or
| letter sets of Gorton/TTH/etc. And that is also done
| throughout both with direct evidence and without.
| ahoka wrote:
| Read it again then, because all of these are discussed in
| the article.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42688981>
| cluckindan wrote:
| Yes yes, everything is banned on this platform.
| bitwize wrote:
| Yeah -- my dad's lettering template had letterforms like this.
| As the article mentions, the Simplex characters from the
| Hershey set, used in CAD applications, are based on this font,
| probably for consistency with how drafting was traditionally
| done.
| terribleperson wrote:
| I think it's worth calling a font when there were likely cases
| of the font being transmitted, by copying from one source to
| another. E.G. Gorton being made by machines licensed from
| another company, then the output of those machines being used
| for lettering guides.
| tmoertel wrote:
| I think you're right.
|
| I also believe that it's more likely that the font was informed
| by what was commonly taught as good lettering for technical
| drawings in that era.
|
| For example, consider the one-stroke gothic lettering in 1883's
| _Standard Lettering_ , published by the Columbia School of
| Drafting:
|
| https://archive.org/details/standardletterin00claf/page/42/m...
|
| And here's _A TEXT-BOOK OF FREE-HAND LETTERING_ , part of the
| TECHNICAL DRAWING SERIES, first published in 1895:
|
| https://archive.org/details/textbookoffreeha00daniiala/page/...
|
| Consider the "single-stroke lettering" suggested in that
| texbook:
|
| https://archive.org/details/textbookoffreeha00daniiala/page/...
|
| https://archive.org/details/textbookoffreeha00daniiala/page/...
|
| Also consider the model forms for pre-penciled gothic
| lettering:
|
| https://archive.org/details/textbookoffreeha00daniiala/page/...
|
| It seems that such lettering was already common when the
| machines were introduced to produce similar lettering.
| card_zero wrote:
| The 3 with a flat top is a "banker's 3", an anti-forgery
| measure:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3
|
| Playing cards use this style of lettering. Not sure how far
| back that goes but I kind of doubt they all derive from
| Gorton's specific engraving machines.
| lencastre wrote:
| Down the rabbit hole I go....
| eCa wrote:
| And used on eg German license plates, for at least partly
| that reason (IIUC).
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense! Thanks for this insight!
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > And here's A TEXT-BOOK OF FREE-HAND LETTERING, part of the
| TECHNICAL DRAWING SERIES, first published in 1895:
|
| Called out in the article - "but I know simple technical
| writing standards existed already, and likely influenced the
| appearance of the newfangled routing font. [photograph
| captioned: From a 1895 "Free-hand lettering" book by Frank T.
| Daniels]"
| frogpelt wrote:
| I know it was a long essay and I skimmed most of it myself.
| But the author definitely mentions this and even has a
| picture from the 1895 book you linked to.
| fenomas wrote:
| > This style of writing didn't start as a font from some
| company.
|
| TFA doesn't suggest that, at all. A font is a concrete
| instantiation of a writing style, and TFA is about the history
| of one such concrete instance - not the general style it's an
| instance of. Also the connection to drafting and lettering
| stencils is discussed in some detail midway through.
|
| (Also more generally: kind of amazing to imagine reading an
| article of this _depth_ , that mentions years of obsessive
| research and links to the author's 1200-page book on the
| history of typing, and thinking: "yeah this guy probably
| doesn't know about drafting".)
| rambambram wrote:
| After reading such a beautiful piece about an interesting topic
| and researched for hundreds of miles on end, I can rest assured
| that somebody on HN knows better. No doubts, no nothing...
| "just" knows it better.
|
| Edit: The above might sound too harsh, sorry. You're probably
| right, but after reading such a beautiful piece, your reaction
| was really a buzzkill for me.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > The above might sound too harsh, sorry.
|
| Perfectly accurate though.
| atoav wrote:
| I learned that style of writing in school (German:
| _Normschrift_ ). I think this is where the origins of the font
| lie, but having read the article I don't see how the author is
| wrong here.
|
| This is just a thing they failed to emphasize -- maybe --
| considering the credentials, because it was blaringly obvious
| to them.
|
| This feels more like a detrctive story about figuring out the
| origins of one concrete manifestation of a font and not a text
| about where that family of fonts comes from.
| _air wrote:
| Getting hugged:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250214221951/https://aresluna....
| djsavvy wrote:
| The author keeps referring to the font as ugly, but I really
| enjoy it. The variety of signage I've seen it on (national parks,
| placards, industrial applications and schematics) evoke a sense
| of awe in me.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| Agree completely, I quite like the look of the font.
|
| I sometimes feel who are deep in a subject sometimes are too
| entrenched in their world with rules and guidelines, that to me
| don't seem all that important to judge quality in the real
| world; or at least how I perceive things.
|
| Another example also comes from the world of typography: text
| figures (non-lining numerals). To me they're ugly and difficult
| to read. Typographers like them because they fit better into
| the appearance of text, and that's true, but of low importance
| to me. Numbers are not words, and I feel they don't have to
| look the same. I like them to look different. I want them to be
| easy to read, which text figures aren't. (I actually went to
| the effort of creating custom CSS using Firefox's Stylus add-on
| to force lining numerals on all websites I visit.)
| bitwize wrote:
| As a kid (first, maybe second grade) I wrote lining numerals
| at a time when kids were taught to write numerals all at
| x-height, for similar reasons.
| Clamchop wrote:
| They did say they like it, despite it breaking so many "rules".
| kccqzy wrote:
| I also like it, in the same way I like DIN even though the
| author considers DIN to be better designed. I have, like the
| author, often seen this font when it's carved into metal, and I
| suppose the fact that it's on metal helps evoke that feeling of
| industry at its best, like a well oiled machine. I also
| instinctively associate it with the post-WWII period when
| technology seemed to be progressing faster than today and when
| technology was unequivocally a good thing.
| latexr wrote:
| > The author keeps referring to the font as ugly, but I really
| enjoy it.
|
| "Beauty", as they say, "is in the eye of the beholder". It is
| not a value judgement to call something ugly, but a subjective
| opinion. And the author does mention they came to appreciate
| it:
|
| > My first thought was: What a mess. Is this how "grotesque"
| fonts got their name?
|
| > Then, the second thought: I kind of like it.
| anjel wrote:
| As someone who only recently retired my IBM model F, those are
| some hot and spicy keyboards. I wish I'd learned about his book
| sooner.
| Zaheer wrote:
| "In older [keyboards] - those from the early 1960s laboratory
| computers, or the 1980s microcomputers - the way every key was
| constructed was by first molding the letter from plastic of one
| color, and then grabbing a different plastic and molding the key
| around the letter."
|
| This makes me want an old keyboard. Amazing how hardy keyboards
| were back then.
| nemomarx wrote:
| you can still get them like that - the search term is "double
| shot" for using two molds. very popular and durable for custom
| keycaps.
| artursapek wrote:
| This is not an ugly font. It's incredibly legible and IMO the
| lack of styling is pleasing to the eye.
| technol0gic wrote:
| it also facilitates legibility, especially at a slight
| distance, as well as distortion (squishing, stretching) if
| necessary.
|
| Both of which are objectively desirable qualities of a font
| with massive control panels as its native habitat.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > it also facilitates legibility, especially at a slight
| distance, as well as distortion (squishing, stretching) if
| necessary
|
| Except for the terrible, terrible '0', which looks more or
| less identical to the 'O'. IIRC sometimes similar fonts had a
| strike-through 0 for legibility; I think the BBC Micro
| keyboard did, for instance.
| bjclark wrote:
| The BBC Micro keycaps were made by Comptec (mentioned in
| the article) in Gorton Modified. Source: I work at
| signature plastics and have seen the original tooling for
| it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yes it's highly legible at distances, but you'd never want to
| use it for body text. The letterforms are not well balanced --
| e.g. the bowl of the 'R' is uncomfortably high, same with the
| top half of the 'Y'. It would be tiring to the eye to read long
| text in.
|
| A lack of styling does not mean a good sense of balance.
|
| It is ugly but highly legible. Which is just fine for the kinds
| of functional engraving it's meant for.
| watersb wrote:
| This is a phenomenal, 6100-word love letter to possibly the
| world's first industrial typeface.
| tagami wrote:
| The text is the material. The medium is the message!
| throwaway519 wrote:
| On the RTFA theme:
|
| Gorton sold machines that solved problems.
|
| Typography today is a celebration of self.
|
| Nice article though, an interesting anthropological dive and
| perhaps the starting point for some research.
| gessha wrote:
| If you liked this article, you might also like this one about a
| typeface which got tossed into the Thames river:
|
| https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/blog/doves-type-thames-myste...
|
| Does anyone else have cool font/typeface stories?
| pimlottc wrote:
| I don't mean this as a slight, but this has to be written by a
| post-millennial. As a late gen-Xer, nothing about these
| letterforms were unusual or "ugly" to me as they were practically
| ubiquitous. They were just as common and valid as standard
| printed forms.
|
| I suppose it's something like how a modern reader might react to
| seeing a "long s" -- s -- for the first time.
|
| Again, this isn't meant to insult anyone, just that it's really
| fascinating to see a different generational perspective here.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It's weird to immediately assume it's a matter of age. Do you
| have any basis for that?
| zem wrote:
| as another gen-xer i was similarly bemused by the repeated
| references to the font as ugly, so it did kind of make sense
| to think that the issue was the author not having grown up
| with it quite as ubiquitous
| latexr wrote:
| Ubiquity has nothing to do with beauty. It is perfectly
| possible for an individual with taste to find something
| they deal with frequently to be ugly. Especially if they
| find a flaw early on and it never goes away.
| fenomas wrote:
| The author isn't saying he finds the style unfamiliar - the
| entire article is about how ubiquitous it is. He's a
| typographer, so I think he means "ugly" in the sense of having
| features that modern typographers consider to be flaws - e.g.
| he mentions the off-balance G, being monoline, etc.
|
| Also the author's CV lists working at google from 2006, so he's
| not exactly a youngster.
| usrusr wrote:
| I read that "ugly" not as a "what is this yesrerdayish mess,
| was life in the twntieth really that unrefined?", but as a
| "technically, it's breaking all the rules", a judgement from
| typography knowledge, not from generational identity. And I
| read it as an expression of _surprise_ , because they spent so
| much time with that ubiquitous type in sight without ever
| noticing it, until one day they stopped not noticing it. No
| trace of generational shifts.
| technol0gic wrote:
| If you think that's all they said about it, you didn't finish
| the article. That was the introduction.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Marcin looks to be perhaps in the same age bracket as you, but
| with a different context for letter forms. I believe that
| people with skillsets that are heavily aesthetic driven - all
| aspects of graphic design included - see things that non
| designers don't. A lopsided ampersand that wouldn't raise your
| eyebrow could be considered laughable to a font designer,
| keming that doesn't bear mentioning a crime against the written
| form.
| colinprince wrote:
| I love the casual "If that didn't bother you before, it will
| bother you through the rest of this article" thrown in there
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Marcin is definitely Gen-X. His LinkedIn says he started his
| master's degree in 1997. Assuming a typical education that'd
| put his birth year around 1974. (Note he grew up in Poland, so
| a different Gen-X experience than from the US.)
|
| Perhaps what you're interpreting as generational perspective is
| Marcin's analytical perspective as a professional designer.
| He's got a very keen eye for both historical design and modern.
| Also I read this post as a sort of fond irony, "look at this
| unusual and ugly font it's actually a thing of beauty, let me
| show you."
| latexr wrote:
| > I don't mean this as a slight, but this has to be written by
| a post-millennial.
|
| You could've looked him up. He's not hard to find and
| definitely not post-millennial. Design director at Figma and
| previously worked at Medium, Google, and Code for America.
| Started his master's in the late 90s.
|
| https://mastodon.online/@mwichary
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDI8ubVZi7w
|
| Even if he were, these types of generational comments are
| trite, like the "only 90s kids will get this" memes. It is
| naive to assume someone's age from an opinion; the tapestry of
| human diversity is considerably more complex than that.
|
| > nothing about these letterforms were unusual or "ugly" to me
| as they were practically ubiquitous.
|
| Ubiquity has nothing to do with beauty. You can live with
| something all your life and still find it ugly. Or you can
| develop your taste and change your opinion. You can even have
| nuanced opinions. Like the author, who mentions _liking_ the
| font after the initial reaction. He called this post "a love
| letter".
|
| https://hachyderm.io/@mwichary@mastodon.online/1140043864696...
|
| Look at the length of the post--that is more research on the
| subject than most of us will ever do. Let's perhaps give the
| benefit of the doubt that a long time professional with the
| passion to do this amount of research has some basis for their
| views which go beyond when they were born.
|
| > like how a modern reader might react to seeing a "long s" --
| s -- for the first time.
|
| There are a plethora of reactions to that: "how strange", "how
| intriguing", "how beautiful", ... Most people don't think every
| old thing they encounter for the first time is ugly.
| MalbertKerman wrote:
| I don't know if it's generational or a matter of background.
| For me, as the sort of person who knows exactly where to find
| the SCE power switch, it would be impossible to conceive of
| this font as ugly. So much ingenuity has been expressed, so
| much craftsmanship given material form, so many feats of
| industry and exploration and mundane utility accomplished
| through those shapes that I find them definitively beautiful.
|
| If some community teaches Rules of Beauty which these
| characters contravene and are thereby deemed ugly, that says
| more about the merit of such Rules than anything else.
|
| That ampersand, though... okay. You can have that one.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| The lower cases letters are certainly ugly as hell, though.
| RainyDayTmrw wrote:
| A bit of a meta-comment. Something about this piece hits exactly
| the sweet spot of length and complexity for engaging but still
| accessible prose, which I feel like has become rarer over time,
| replaced by the modern writing of instant gratification. (Whether
| less is being produced, or it's less prominent, or whether the
| other kinds have become more prominent, I can't say for sure.) I
| really appreciated it, independent of the subject matter.
| miohtama wrote:
| This blog post presents the best of Internet
| Lio wrote:
| So the Gorton font is as American as apple pie?
|
| ...i.e. British! :P
|
| (Sorry couldn't resist)
|
| I think I have this font indelibly burned into my brain from a
| childhood of using 8-bit computers.
| relistan wrote:
| It's so great to read something interesting, well written, well
| supported and researched, and totally engrossing. This could have
| been a paid piece in a magazine, but was given to us all for
| free. Thanks for that!
| technol0gic wrote:
| For a time I wrote code for BMS/BAS systems for many prominent
| commercial buildings in the NYC area, control rooms in basements
| and on rooftops and all the secret in-between rooms, in-between.
| (A fascinating job not without its exposure to asbestos, among
| other hazards.)
|
| And, as someone born and raised in the south, I was thoroughly
| enamored with this ubiquitous font that implied the seriousness
| and purpose of each control implement, to include the priority of
| the functionality said implement represented, on countless panels
| I engaged with.
|
| This deep dive was pleasing to my soul and I'm immensely thankful
| to the author for taking the time (and the photos) to indulge in
| traversing this wormhole for us.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| It's a long time since I thought about doing Leroy lettering, so
| I was delighted to see the tiny clip of someone doing that. My
| thoughts on Leroy were a bit divided, I have to say.
|
| When I was young we were first taught how to letter by hand, so
| when we were allowed to use Leroy, it felt a lot like cheating. I
| suppose it was great that perfect results were easy to achieve,
| but replacing skill with pattern-following was not necessarily an
| improvement.
|
| To this day, I linger over old research articles that have maps
| and graphs that had been lettered by hand. Many papers written in
| the 1800s have beautifully clear line drawings of apparatus that
| can be much more useful than the photos included in newer papers.
| detourdog wrote:
| Leroy sets was something that would set my dad off on a rant of
| his struggles with a Leroy lettering set. These would come on
| in quiet moments of contemplation. When I entered design school
| his first question was regarding Leroy lettering. We were the
| first class to go through the curriculum with a Macintosh lab
| and I never used a Leroy set.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and: Lettering guides (sort of) allowed multiple people to
| maintain drawings. Even then, individual skill and technique
| allowed team mates to recognize each other's work.
|
| I knew one person who had _perfect_ hand lettering. And could
| mimick other people 's lettering. Alas, they eschewed forgery,
| embracing jazz instead. (They hand lettered their own liner
| notes, natch.)
|
| Source: I was a truly terrible draughtsman.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| > Alas, they eschewed forgery, embracing jazz instead.
|
| Neil Caffrey would be proud!
| imdsm wrote:
| Sad, images stopped loading, reloaded the article half way
| through and site is down :(
| vertnerd wrote:
| Thank you so much for writing this. I am a solo game developer
| working on a vintage-styled spacecraft simulator, tearing his
| hair out over the cockpit typeface problem. I recognized the
| classic Apollo spacecraft from the sign engraving tools I'd seen
| in use on the job about 40 years ago, but I couldn't figure out
| the name for it or identify a font that recreated it properly.
|
| Add this to the list of wonderful things I never expected to wake
| up to on HN!
| mjmas wrote:
| Who else clicked on 'feel' in the last paragraph?
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > I grabbed a brand-new DSLR camera and photographed all the
| fonts I was supposed to love.
|
| I'm relieved to find I'm not the only person who wanders around
| photographing the typography.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| I only do it to photograph Comic Sans and Papyrus to send as
| jokes in a family group chat.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > I'm relieved to find I'm not the only person who wanders
| around photographing the typography.
|
| There are N of us!
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is a beautiful article. Absolutely fascinating.
|
| Honestly it feels like it ought to be a coffee-table book. I'd
| buy it.
| bjclark wrote:
| The author wrote a whole coffee table book called "Shift
| Happens". But it was a one and done kickstarter.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| WOW that took a long time to load.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/SsH1DHt.png
|
| Excellent article though.
| squeedles wrote:
| Came for the typography geek-out, stayed for the machine tools
| and ANSI Y14 refs.
|
| Had no idea the rabbit hole went this deep. Work with CAD
| standards and on my to-do list is adding rendering for IFC text
| notes to a GL application and was wondering what default font to
| use. Haven't checked STEP yet, but IGES defined a special font
| code (FC2) for "LeRoy", so these things percolate through
| technology like the apocryphal Roman Cart/Railroad Gauge story!
| chiph wrote:
| I've seen this font everywhere for my whole life and never looked
| into it's history. It's a fascinating account and I'm glad Marcin
| wrote it down.
|
| Emotionally, what I feel when I see text using it is: "This
| information is serious and if you don't pay attention to what
| this says someone could get hurt"
|
| There's nothing playful about it at all, which makes sense in how
| it was used for industrial controls, military signage, elevators,
| and the like.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| And yet, according to the author, it has some quirks.
|
| The idea is that the font itself is not particularly serious,
| but we are used to see it in serious contexts, so we make the
| association.
|
| And there is also the support, when some text is engraved on
| metal, there is some permanence to it, some commitment. The one
| who wrote this really means it. It is not like a sheet of
| paper, or worse, a computer screen where everything can vanish
| at the push of a button.
|
| I think the titles summarizes it perfectly. It means hard work.
| When we see this, we imagine industrial machinery and
| professionals, because that's where it is used. In an
| alternative world where Comic Sans would be used for this
| purpose, it would be seen as serious.
| rezmason wrote:
| What timing! I'd just worked out* the "stickfont" or "open-path
| font" or "stroke font" that one of my favorite defunct games
| rendered with GL_LINE_STRIP, and it seems to be from the Hershey
| glyph set. If you haven't heard of it, it's a remarkable
| achievement of one individual contributor, essentially a career
| engineer applying vector graphic rendering to technical
| lettering.
|
| http://www.whence.com/hershey-fonts
|
| * with the help of others ^_^
| vidarh wrote:
| It's funny seeing Letraset described as popular through the
| 1960's. They were still available in most stationery stores well
| into the 1980's at least, and commonly used because they provided
| better headlines etc. for small newspapers and the like than dot
| matrix printers for anything you wanted to photocopy rather than
| sending to have typeset by a professional printer.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Great essay, really enjoyed it! In particular all the beautiful
| photos!
|
| Typography is a bit of mystery to me. I can somehow recognize
| "bad" or "strange" fonts, but often I can't put my finger on it.
| I was immediately put off by the font of the essay, but I kept
| reading, and right in the middle came the big reveal (spoiler
| alert):
|
| > (This essay is typeset in a strangely-spaced version of Century
| put together for Selectric Composer typewriters and recreated for
| on-screen use. If that didn't bother you before, it will bother
| you through the rest of this article.)
|
| Well played!
| carlos-menezes wrote:
| Brass Mono [0] is a digital alternative to "Gorton".
|
| [0]: https://github.com/fonsecapeter/brass_mono
| flappyeagle wrote:
| The author has a brilliant presentation on pixel fonts
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDI8ubVZi7w&list=PLXDU_eVOJT...
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