Font used on Cricket Old Fashioned Scoreboard

[Welles_...@adobeforums.com]

Can anyone help with the identification of this font? It has marvelously clean lines and is legible from a long way off.

Here's a photograph. <http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/Font.jpg>

Thank you.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda@adobeforums.com]

I thought I recognized the figures (numbers) as a weight of Churchward, as it's the only face with the characteristic 1 and 3 I can think of; but the letters certainly have nothing in common with the whimsical Churchward.

[Toby_...@adobeforums.com]

The numbers are likely drawn for the purpose; but a DIN or highway signage-based font (Interstate?) might have something similar. The lettering looks, unfortunately, like a bold Arial. Too gross to be News Gothic and not Helvetica either.

[Toby_...@adobeforums.com]

[Neil_...@adobeforums.com]

Two different typefaces, but not Arial. Also note that signmakers have often "made up" their own fonts that might be based upon "real" fonts, although this is generally not a design improvement. I noticed that the K is too wide, the N is too narrow, etc. Also, the font used for the club name is not quite the same as the other small type.

Neil

[Esmon...@adobeforums.com]

These were originally painted from a stencil of course, and the commercial plates in your photo may just have been replicated from an original stencil, but it's very like the sans-serif lettering the Royal Navy and shipbuilders were using decades before London Underground was thought of (and decades before Bauhaus too). Consider e.g. the rear of the Titanic. This was not a new look in ship lettering in 1912.

EJP

[Dee Holmes]

It's not Gill Sans or something simple?

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

It's not Gill Sans - look at letters like the C, K, R, and S, and the numerals. That chpped edge on the 4 and 7 is quite distinctive too (not sure of the technical name for it), but it's not a Gill Sans thing. Syntax has a similar 4 and 7, but it's definitely not Syntax. I would agree with Esmond that they're from a stencil.

[Welles_...@adobeforums.com]

Dominic,

I would agree with Esmond that they're from a stencil.

I too agree with Esmond. Before posting I looked at about 1,000 sans serif and slab sans fonts using FontAgent Pro's Font Player at a high speed. The first character I looked for was the number 1 because that number, as displayed on the sign, is an extremely rare shape. In fact I only found 10 or so possibles which were eliminated by other character comparisons. I gave up and posted the question here!

[Stuart...@adobeforums.com]

Ah, finally, a use case for the Font Player feature of Font Agent Pro!

[Welles_...@adobeforums.com]

Stuart,

Actually I use that feature quite often, well maybe once a week. I have a library of about 6,500 fonts which were imported into libraries by Foundry and placed into about 50 sets by descriptive categorizations of my own 'fontish' terminology. When I want a font for a project to express a certain 'feel.' I'll begin by running through a set and let the shapes flash before my eyes until one or more stand out for that particular job. I like the feature but mostly I used to swear by FontReserve which I used since v. 1 but in early versions of Mac OS X the database was destroyed on several occasions and I came to believe that I couldn't count on it. Boo! I liked FontReserve, too.

[Stuart...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the info. I’m evaluating Font Agent Pro and I was struggling to figure out how one would use the “player” feature. Now that I see how others use it I might just give it a try myself.

[Paul...@adobeforums.com]

The closest I've seen to these numerals (it is a set of signwritten or possibly stencilled numerals, not a typeface or font, because it's never been used to set typematter) are those used by London Transport and its predecessors for the registration plates of London buses. Very good photographs of these are in Glancey, J. 'Douglas Scott'. London: The Design Council, 1988. This alphabet/numeral set was in use from at least 1911 (see Green & Rewse-Davies, 'Designed for London', London; Laurence King, 1995, photo p. 30) and was used as long as LT designed and repaired its own vehicles (ie until the privatization in the 80s). So it is clearly a 'standard' signwriters/stencil alphabet, and there must be reference sources. I'll ask Phil Baines and Eric Kindel if they know any more abut the origins of the design.

Paul Luna

[Welles_...@adobeforums.com]

Excellent information, Paul! Thank you.