Font talk

Are there any good resources for free fonts? This is one place where I have struggled when designing my enclosures for UV printing. I'm a complete beginner, and it's very frustrating when you know it looks bad, but have no idea how to fix it. I've found a couple that work for me (I used gautfonts.com), but I would be interested in finding some more. For example a script type font that "just works" and looks good for labeling pedal controls, or does it depend too much on the other art and the situation where you use it to get some "general" fonts for different styles?

I've noticed googling for free fonts just leads me to 1001freefonts.com or whatever it is, and those just look really bad to me. But then again, it could just be my untrained eye that doesn't recognize how they could work well.
 
Bricksnbeatles said:
I *should* be able to recognize this font, but it eludes me... The 'G's, 'E's, and 'P' should be the quickest giveaway, but I can't put my finger on it. I've just been scrolling thru all of my fonts, but I have way too many, so after a half hour of searching I'm only just approaching fonts that start with the letter C...

Edit: The AI font identifier site came thru for once. It's Septimus or Quadrata. Luckily I have Quadrata, so....
Click to expand...
Definitely in the Friz Quadrata zone--if it's technically a different face, a few glyphs were probably changed to be just different enough.

But that kerning...
 
Bricksnbeatles said:
I *should* be able to recognize this font, but it eludes me... The 'G's, 'E's, and 'P' should be the quickest giveaway, but I can't put my finger on it. I've just been scrolling thru all of my fonts, but I have way too many, so after a half hour of searching I'm only just approaching fonts that start with the letter C...
Click to expand...
To me it looks quite similar to France
www.wfonts.com

France Font | wfonts.com - download free

France Bold France Bold France Bold 001. 003 FranceBold.
www.wfonts.com

1685513293586.png
 
Don't have legit Fritz Quadrata on my macbook rn, but I have a look-alike called Quadra, and that did the trick.
First step is doing a quick recreation of the original graphic (including recreating the average of the terrible kerning of each separate line before I eventually go back and get things uniform) to get an idea of placement before I change the text, logo, and alignment of everything to actually look decent. A tad bit heavier than Fritz Quadrata I think, but not absurdly so.
Screenshot 2023-05-31 at 2.21.29 AM.png
 
Bricksnbeatles said:
Don't have legit Fritz Quadrata on my macbook rn, but I have a look-alike called Quadra, and that did the trick.
First step is doing a quick recreation of the original graphic (including recreating the average of the terrible kerning of each separate line before I eventually go back and get things uniform) to get an idea of placement before I change the text, logo, and alignment of everything to actually look decent. A tad bit heavier than Fritz Quadrata I think, but not absurdly so.
View attachment 49531
Click to expand...

I actually really like the weight of that work-a-like. I often reach for something other than Friz Quadrata because I’m looking more for this weight between the two of Friz. I usually settle for Albertus Bold which gives a similar vibe but definitely taking note of this

@Fama I’ll try to write up some resources later today but google fonts and fontsquirrel are two of my go to free font suggestions. sites like dafont and abstractfonts are also full of freebie dupes of famous fonts, and whatever your thoughts on font piracy are, that has at least a degree or two more plausible deniability than an actual unlicensed official font file
 
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Fama said:
Are there any good resources for free fonts? This is one place where I have struggled when designing my enclosures for UV printing. I'm a complete beginner, and it's very frustrating when you know it looks bad, but have no idea how to fix it. I've found a couple that work for me (I used gautfonts.com), but I would be interested in finding some more. For example a script type font that "just works" and looks good for labeling pedal controls, or does it depend too much on the other art and the situation where you use it to get some "general" fonts for different styles?

I've noticed googling for free fonts just leads me to 1001freefonts.com or whatever it is, and those just look really bad to me. But then again, it could just be my untrained eye that doesn't recognize how they could work well.
Click to expand...
I like this one. You can type in your text as well to see how it will look.

www.fontspace.com

Free Fonts | 100,000+ Font Downloads | FontSpace

Free downloads of legally licensed fonts that are perfect for your design projects. The best place in the universe to search for amazing fonts.
www.fontspace.com www.fontspace.com
 
Bricksnbeatles said:
Don't have legit Fritz Quadrata on my macbook rn, but I have a look-alike called Quadra, and that did the trick.
First step is doing a quick recreation of the original graphic (including recreating the average of the terrible kerning of each separate line before I eventually go back and get things uniform) to get an idea of placement before I change the text, logo, and alignment of everything to actually look decent. A tad bit heavier than Fritz Quadrata I think, but not absurdly so.
View attachment 49531
Click to expand...
If you outline the font, and do a thin stroke in the background color, you can thin it out slightly. I do this all the time, (more typically thickening fonts, when a packaging designer gives us, say the back of a hair product bottle that has tons of 6 point type with strokes that are too thin to reproduce). (But zoomed in, on their computers, it looks so good!)

A face like this, with very little stroke width variation, works pretty well for this. I’m talking strokes of .002-.005 points to thin it out. 5D52E518-9C70-443C-8708-F751557F6D3C.jpeg
(edited to add image: bottle prototypes, 2020)
 
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finebyfine said:
Damn now this is gonna kill me because the last font I was trying to ID in the Permanent Headline derivative category also had that straighter R leg than the rest of them
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Yeah, this one is tough. I don’t think they’re changing a single glyph here. IDing this one with AI resources is suggesting a lot of misses. The narrow ‘E’ and ‘F’ seems to be especially confusing.
 
benny_profane said:
Yeah, this one is tough. I don’t think they’re changing a single glyph here. IDing this one with AI resources is suggesting a lot of misses. The narrow ‘E’ and ‘F’ seems to be especially confusing.
Click to expand...

Considering the general vibe of the album cover and alternates being like, very very on trend graphic design, I’d try bouncing around on creative market fonts if you haven’t which I find a good resource for that. Even just clicking over to their sans category the second thing it showed me was pretty close other than the Q and N.
 
finebyfine said:
Considering the general vibe of the album cover and alternates being like, very very on trend graphic design, I’d try bouncing around on creative market fonts if you haven’t which I find a good resource for that. Even just clicking over to their sans category the second thing it showed me was pretty close other than the Q and N.
Click to expand...
Very good point. I'll give it a shot! I know this is very trendy, but ink traps are always very cool to see in a typeface, and that Q is making me curious about the rest of the glyphs.
 
Can anyone tell what fonts were used on the Manowar - Triumph of Steel cover, or any tips on what to look for? Preferable I would be after free fonts (it's for a more of a shitpost-style project so nothing expensive, I could buy cheap licenses too if those are available).

en.wikipedia.org

The Triumph of Steel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Fama said:
Can anyone tell what fonts were used on the Manowar - Triumph of Steel cover, or any tips on what to look for? Preferable I would be after free fonts (it's for a more of a shitpost-style project so nothing expensive, I could buy cheap licenses too if those are available).

en.wikipedia.org

The Triumph of Steel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Click to expand...
have you tried using what the font or similar services? just crop the text and turn it black and white for maximum contrast and feed it to the app, it'll present you with some options. That typeface looks to have been customized, of course
 
Fama said:
Can anyone tell what fonts were used on the Manowar - Triumph of Steel cover, or any tips on what to look for? Preferable I would be after free fonts (it's for a more of a shitpost-style project so nothing expensive, I could buy cheap licenses too if those are available).
Click to expand...

Looks like some kind of Celtic/Viking style font.
 
andare said:
have you tried using what the font or similar services? just crop the text and turn it black and white for maximum contrast and feed it to the app, it'll present you with some options. That typeface looks to have been customized, of course
Click to expand...
Hey, thanks! That service works well enough for me.
 
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