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'g' with a backwards ear - What is it?
Posted by ebensorkin in
19 Jun 2007 — 8:29am
19 Jun 2007 — 8:29am
I went to see a Canadian film called 'a whole new thing' last night. It was pretty good. But in the titles there was an interesting g. I think they picked the font for it. It looked like this. Any idea where it comes from?
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19 Jun 2007 — 8:33am
Wow, that must be the doppelganger of Artcraft.
19 Jun 2007 — 8:35am
Maybe hand-drawn based on Artcraft?
(Again, not near my old source files... lately I've been wrong alot).
19 Jun 2007 — 8:39am
I think you are right. Thanks! The T is specific looking enough to be quite sure I think.
19 Jun 2007 — 10:14am
Strangely, the 'g' in the bold weight of Artcraft goes the other way.
19 Jun 2007 — 10:37am
Aha! So not custom.
19 Jun 2007 — 10:47am
How old was the Canadian film you saw, Eben?
Artcraft is a pretty old face, and we're only showing URW++ digital cuts.
19 Jun 2007 — 10:51am
I found the culprit, but I can't tell you where.
(Though I'm not sure URW++ has exclusive rights to this early 1900s design?)
BTW -- Aardvark Letterpress features several sizes of hot metal cuts of Artcraft. In one sample the "g" ear seems to back towards the right. This might suggest that somewhere in point size masters it flips from left to right or vice versa... that would really be cool to find out.
19 Jun 2007 — 11:40am
Eben --
I'm not near my collection right now, but I'm pretty sure I've got this in my old Barnhart Brothers & Spindler specimen book. I'm pretty certain that the "backwards" ear was in the original metal. I'll check the series when I get home and see if there's any sign of any flipping ear.
-- K.
19 Jun 2007 — 11:40am
The film was originally made in 2005 I think and went around the circuit in 2006. That's how we get it in Alaska in 2007. ;-)
I expect it was the URW/FF digital that was used based on the way the titles looked- Digital texture in the font...
I actually thought it might have been one of Nick Shinn's faces when I saw it in the theatre.
Might Fontesque owe some of it's whimsy to this face...?
Also the proportions feel very Nick to me somehow.
19 Jun 2007 — 2:00pm
Okay, I had a quick look at my specimens and this thing is a little more mysterious than it seemed at first glance. It will take a little more research, which I don't have time for right now.
Here's what I've encountered so far. Artcraft is shown in both my BB&S specimen (c. 1925) and my 1923 ATF catalog. I can't remember if BB&S had joined ATF by 1923, but it would seem so; and yet there's the independent catalog, which I tentatively dated based on some Cooper Black evidence. No matter.
The BB&S samples do have mixed 'g's in the 10 point size. But there is no alternate 'g' shown among the displayed auxiliary forms. The Bold has one in the 8 pt showing. Not all sizes show examples of a 'g'.
Offhand, right now I'm guessing that one of the 'g's is wrong font, and probably comes from the related Pencraft series.
The ATF samples also show a wrong 'g' in the 18 pt size (and no alternate in the character set). The Bold also has a wrong 'g' in the 8 pt. *But* the thing is: ATF doesn't have Pencraft listed among their offerings. So where do the wrong font 'g's come from?
I'll need to spend a little more time sleuthing when I get a chance. And I'll get some scans up.
But don't hold your breath.
-- K.
19 Jun 2007 — 4:31pm
I confess to appropriating that idea for the italics of Fontesque. There are probably other faces that have something similar -- including one with a single-storey slab serif g?
19 Jun 2007 — 5:58pm
I would say they make far more sense there in Fontesque than they do in artcraft. From all the rummaging around it sounds like some people didn't always have the courage of their convictions when it came to Artcraft.
I also want to point out that while it's cool to get all the details worked up re: Artcraft - Stephen did ID my requested sample correctly as the font available at FF. I don't want to stop you, I just wanted to put credit where it's due...
19 Jun 2007 — 6:41pm
My 1990 Agfa Type Specimen book shows Artcraft Light, Light Italic and Bold, which means they were available to high-end CRT imagesetters. All of the lowercase "g" ears veer to the left.
We built the much of our outline database from our Compugraphic film font library. I recall promoting Artcraft using film fonts for the EditWriter.
19 Jun 2007 — 10:06pm
The "g" in my Paphos has a backwards ear.
But I've tried to make it more fauve than comical.
hhp