[HN Gopher] Buttered Crumpet, a custom typeface for Wallace and ...
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Buttered Crumpet, a custom typeface for Wallace and Gromit
Author : tobr
Score : 208 points
Date : 2026-01-30 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jamieclarketype.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jamieclarketype.com)
| afavour wrote:
| Really feel like this ought to have been named Wensleydale.
|
| (this is awesome)
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| EDIT: I'm wrong
| Jarmsy wrote:
| Wensleydale is a place in Yorkshire, and a style of cheese,
| not specific to any one brand, so you could.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| I'm not sure it's a brand name so much as a type of cheese.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| "It's cheese, Gromit!"
| imnes wrote:
| Is there a nerdfont variant?
| unicorn_cowboy wrote:
| Very cute and charming!
| xnorswap wrote:
| Was the crumpet buttered with "I can't believe it's not butter"?
|
| ( The typeface looks a lot like https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-
| ui/product/i-cant-believe-i... )
| shoelessone wrote:
| There are a lot of similarities. You must either have a great
| memory for fonts, or eat a lot of butter alternative spread,
| either way good eye!
| undecisive wrote:
| It's interesting; I'd imagine very similar design briefs
| (friendliness, breadliness, etc)
|
| The ICBINB font is almost a semi-serif, almost like a sans
| serif that's slightly melted, whereas I'd say the crumpet is
| fully serif. The "e", "L" and "v" are pretty different. And I'd
| say the ICBINB font lends itself better to tighter spaces,
| whereas the crumpet font seems to beg for more space.
|
| But certainly, I could see one being used to replace another in
| a pinch - but I'm not a font specialist (graphologist? Is there
| a word for a person who studies fonts?)
| quotemstr wrote:
| Yeah. It's convergent evolution towards bouba-ness. (See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect)
| danesparza wrote:
| Ah, a British convergence! That phrase always makes me think of
| this now (from the Vicar of Dibley):
| https://youtu.be/37ficiqoE6U
|
| RIP Emma Chambers
| pverheggen wrote:
| Nice find! That looks like Cooper Black, which the article
| cites as inspiration.
| hamburglar wrote:
| Is it intentional that the baseline vertical offset doesn't seem
| consistent? Text set in this has a sort of up-and-down sloppy
| effect. Otherwise I love it.
|
| Edit: it mostly seems that capitals appear higher than lowercase.
| It feels like there's more inconsistency though, like the
| designer didn't pay attention to eg the perceived "bottom" of
| curved characters vs flat-bottom ones.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I was just coming here to say, it looks like each letter is
| about to fall over backwards.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| IMO for a cartoon like W&G a little wonkiness and skew is
| entirely on-point.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It seems intentionally cartoonishly irregular.
| fwip wrote:
| Doesn't seem like a ton of attention has been paid to kerning,
| either. The 'he' pair seems especially noticeable to me, which
| occurs several times in the "somewhere where there's cheese"
| image. I don't know enough about font design to guess whether
| the 'bad' kerning is intentional for the typeface, though - so
| I could be off base.
| ramses0 wrote:
| Simply the "I" and "N" baselines on "Cracking" is wildly (un-
| professionally) off! Took a screenshot and there's +/- three
| pixels or so with no artistic justification for it. Even Comic
| Sans has a consistent baseline!
| cush wrote:
| Fonts are such an underappreciated art form. Love this
| quotemstr wrote:
| Too few people appreciate typefaces. Are they under-overall
| though? Those who do appreciate get really, really, really into
| them. I'm sure it nets out. :-)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I feel like hipster typography is as much an intrinsic part
| of 2010s design culture as cafes that look like farmhouses,
| or startups named after common nouns. Saturday Night Live
| made a sketch about Papyrus nearly ten years ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/jVhlJNJopOQ
|
| https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/how-ryan-goslings-papyrus-
| becam...
| shrikant wrote:
| That's beautiful, I'd love a monospaced variant of this to
| replace Comic Mono in my IDE/Fira Mono in my terminal. IANA font
| expert though, would that even be possible?
| rda2 wrote:
| It's cute, and I'm trusting enough to believe them when it says
| 100% home made, but square images with a strong yellow tint will
| forever be associated with ChatGPT 4o image generation in my
| mind. Unfortunately, this might become something like the em-dash
| --where artists start tweaking their work to look less like the
| AI's that are copying them.
| presbyterian wrote:
| The cheese pattern and the green teacup pattern after it are
| obviously AI generated. The weird curve of the wedges, the
| fuzzy edges to the cheese holes, the artifacting around the
| edges of the teacups, the fact that neither is a perfectly
| repeating pattern. It's 100% AI, even if the font may not be.
| mttch wrote:
| Even more obvious, look at the detail on the frame - it's a
| unusual pattern that doesn't repeat as you would expect.
| parpfish wrote:
| In 15 years, the youths will become obsessed with that strange
| yellow cartoon style. They will crave that "vintage ChatGPT
| aesthetic".
| trial3 wrote:
| yeah, in the same way we all revisit our studio ghibli family
| photos from time to time
| rustystump wrote:
| My back breaks in cringe anytime i see an ai ghibli
| picture. It is an instant negative for me.
| mbo wrote:
| I've seen nostalgia expressed for the CLIP guided diffusion
| aesthetic of 2021!
| henrebotha wrote:
| > this might become something like the em-dash--where artists
| start tweaking their work to look less like the AI's that are
| copying them.
|
| Literally how art has always worked
| IAmBroom wrote:
| ... right up until July 9, 1962, when one Mr. Andrew Warhola
| upset the tradition.
|
| And pretty much ever since, too.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > Unfortunately, this might become something like the em-dash--
| where artists start tweaking their work to look less like the
| AI's that are copying them.
|
| So true! (And yes--I see what you did there.)
|
| It's even happening to photos now. A few months ago I posted a
| "Bot alert!" on Nextdoor warning people about the latest
| scambot.
|
| One person replied "It's funny to see a bot reporting a bot."
|
| I asked how they discovered I was a bot.
|
| "It's your profile photo. The facial expression is too good,
| and the smoothness of the background is too perfect. Has to be
| AI."
|
| For the curious, it's the same photo as on my LinkedIn:
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/
|
| What they didn't know was how I took that selfie. I set up my
| Micro Four Thirds camera on a tripod in the front yard, with
| the world's best portrait lens: the Olympus 75mm f/1.8. I stood
| some 10-15 feet from it (this lens is equivalent to a 150mm
| lens on a full frame camera, i.e. a moderate telephoto) and
| used the remote control to take a few dozen shots as I let my
| face relax into various expressions.
|
| I picked out 4-5 favorites and asked a friend about them. She
| said "This one. It has gravitas."
|
| I don't even think it's that great a photo. But I suppose the
| "gravitas" makes it look like AI.
|
| For a photo that really shows off what that 75mm lens can do,
| check out this one of our late dog Brownie, titled Pumpkin
| Brownie:
|
| https://geary.smugmug.com/Pets/Dogs/i-dNMQW2v/A
| savanaly wrote:
| Enjoyed your photos, thanks for explaining about how they
| were made.
| manIliketea wrote:
| 100% Homemade is just a stock phrase that they are using to
| display the type-face. I don't think you should take that to
| mean anything more than "Feathers McGraw."
| zabzonk wrote:
| Shouldn't there be some holes?
| barcodehorse wrote:
| There's a miniscule dent on the top of the capital B that's
| really bothering me. Idk, I know everyone's a critic, but it just
| doesnt sit right with me
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I clearly don't have refined appreciation of visual typographic
| nuance because I do not see this at all.
| ordu wrote:
| When I look at the text on the whole it seems that individual
| characters are not aligned properly, or maybe not vertical
| enough, or something like this. But when I look at individual
| characters to confirm it, I don't see any misalignment. How does
| it work?
| kraftman wrote:
| Yeah they looked like they were wobbling while I read them
| until I focused on them more.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| I watched S1,Ep2 yesterday. When Wallace took down a picture of a
| pink pig to open the wall safe and then took out a pink piggy
| bank, I almost lost it. Classic!
| k_kiki wrote:
| It's quite round and looks pretty good.
| chihuahua wrote:
| It's halfway between Comic Sans and the 1970s "Groovy" font.
| jws wrote:
| Just a note, if you want a special whimsical typeface, there are
| any number of talented folk on fiverr and similar that will make
| you one. Well worth it. For the cost of a lunch I got this turned
| into a font that I really like...
|
| "Imagine an advanced alien race of octopus-like creatures who
| don't use writing. They encounter humans, enslave some and take
| them on their spaceships, but find they have to label things for
| the humans to read. Make me a font that is how these creatures
| would approximate our writing systems by miming the letters with
| their tentacles."
|
| It's a glorious sinuous typeface which I use for labeling drawers
| and bins in my semi-industrial space.
|
| You deserve your own personal typeface.
| naet wrote:
| Anyone know a similar-ish font? I'd love to use one, and this
| looks great to me.
| gregjw wrote:
| hey! a local designer. this looks great.
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(page generated 2026-01-30 23:00 UTC)