Is this for sale or what? Details, man. We need details! Where was it sourced from?

Here's a link:

http://www.veer.com/results.asp?image=LFT2244900

There's a bit of Letraset-supplied background information on the page. I'd like to offer more, but that's all they gave us. It actually only has a couple of animal images included. See below:

> never received a response.

You probably just weren't wearing oversized dark glasses and slobbering at the mouth enough.

Handwriting fonts are bad enough, but fonts of bad handwriting of dead celebrities is a bit too much for me.

hhp

>Is that a problem?

It depends on the estate and their lawyers. It does tend to vary from case to case. As a rule we do not do any fonts "based on" or even "inspired by" unless we have permission and/or licensing or unless it is in the public domain.

If I didn't know whose hand it was, I wouldn't be upset.
But the font is riding on Lennon's celebrity, so to see it used to set text like "I am so money" in Veer's catalog is disconcerting.
After all, he was the guy who wrote "Imagine no possessions".

If you don't think this is a problem, how would you feel about a handwriting font called "Meinkampf"?

>... to see it used to set text like "I am so money"
>... in Veer's catalog is disconcerting.

Most people won't make this connection without a bit of footwork on their part, but I agree with Nick that it's an uncomfortable and perhaps inappropriate association. What would have made it worse, is if we had leveraged the Lennon connection in any way to sell the face. We didn't.

To be honest, that particular headline gives me the willies regardless of what face it is set in.

When we ride our bikes in the summer, we take a break at the end of our ride right by Strawberry Fields (in the shade). I can't tell you how many tourists go out of their way to go there. We always get the question: Where is Strawberry Fields?

There's a big distinction between typefaces, which are designed as commercial production tools, and handwriting, which should be accorded the same privacy (legally) as a person's photograph.

A friend of mine has designed a couple of typefaces, but isn't publishing them, because she wouldn't want them to be used for text that she would find offensive.

if we had leveraged the Lennon connection in any way to sell the face. We didn't

Well its sold as a Lennon handwriting font...

You are so wrong Steve, try West 72nd Street in Central Park Manhattan. Central Park was one of his favorite places and Strawberry Fields is where he hung out in Central Park.

Strawberry Field (yes, singular like that) was a Salvation Army home in Woolton, Liverpool, and John used to go play there with his friends when he was a kid.
Later, in 1966, he used his childhood memories of Strawberry Field and abstracted them for a song, which he called 'Strawberry Fields Forever'.

Here's an excerpt from an interview Lennon gave to Rolling Stone in 1968:

Q: "What is Strawberry Fields?"

JOHN: "It's a name, it's a nice name. When I was writing 'In My Life,' I was trying 'Penny Lane' at that time. We were trying to write about Liverpool, and I just listed all the nice-sounding names, just arbitrarily. Strawberry Fields was a place near us that happened to be a Salvation Army home. But Strawberry Fields-- I mean, I have visions of Strawberry Fields. And there was Penny Lane, and the Cast Iron Shore, which I've just got in some song now, and they were just good names-- just groovy names. Just good sounding. Because Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go."

> Well its sold as a Lennon handwriting font...

What I meant was that it was not leveraged beyond the description that was supplied by the foundry (Letraset). Never was Goo Goo Gjoob referred to as attributable or inspired by Lennon in any of our marketing materials. The product description on the web site that mentions Lennon is a required bit of background information from the designer. We certainly could have emblazoned the cover or inside spreads of our catalogue with superfluous celebrity stroking, but we didn't. That was my original point.

> I haven't seen the printed catalogue, though...

A PDF version is available here.

>>That's a very nice user-image-thing you've got there Steve P.

Oh, Thanks - I think there are loads of interesting and attractive images among the user-image-things of typophile members. I started collecting them at one time, with the idea of maybe doing something with them, but I haven't saved any for a while. Maybe Jared & Joe have them all stashed somewhere?

Haha. Classic!