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Can anyone identify this font?

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Suzanne S. Barnhill

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Aug 30, 2010, 7:17:53 PM8/30/10
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Anyone recognize the font used on the cover of "Where the Mockingbird Sang"?
See it at http://amzn.to/ajP6PE

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

Prof Wonmug

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Aug 30, 2010, 9:17:36 PM8/30/10
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On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:17:53 -0500, "Suzanne S. Barnhill"
<sbar...@mvps.org> wrote:

>Anyone recognize the font used on the cover of "Where the Mockingbird Sang"?
>See it at http://amzn.to/ajP6PE

Birch?

http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&event=displayFontPackage&code=1009&PID=930349

Jay Freedman

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Aug 30, 2010, 9:24:22 PM8/30/10
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On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:17:53 -0500, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" <sbar...@mvps.org> wrote:

>Anyone recognize the font used on the cover of "Where the Mockingbird Sang"?
>See it at http://amzn.to/ajP6PE

Niagara Solid looks similar but not identical. The condensed feeling and the exaggerated x-height look the same. The lower case a and e are noticeably different, and Niagara appears to have a greater
stroke weight variation and smaller serifs (although the picture on Amazon isn't large enough to see that properly).

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit.

Character

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Aug 30, 2010, 9:53:25 PM8/30/10
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> http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&event=displayFontPackage&code=1009&PID=930349

Absolutely! Good catch. Really tough from that small, low resolution
image.

- Character

Prof Wonmug

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Aug 30, 2010, 9:57:44 PM8/30/10
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On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:53:25 -0700, Character <Ch...@cters.bold.italic>
wrote:

Well, I had a good teacher -- you! ;-)

OK, I'll admit that I used Identifont. I wouldn't had have a clue
without it.

http://www.identifont.com/list?1+id+2+1CN+16+LJ+16+GE+15+439+15+6YS+15+NGZ+15+NH0+14+86Z+14+BLU+12+7V3+10+PJ4+7+27C9+7+26Z4+6+LI7+6+27CL+6+27CK+6+PSV+6+P6U+6+5D2+6+I3S+6+24KM+5+26ZC+1

or http://tinyurl.com/24qhayq

You were so helpful to me that I thought I'd try and give a little
something back.

Character

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Aug 30, 2010, 10:06:01 PM8/30/10
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Prof Wonmug wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:53:25 -0700, Character <Ch...@cters.bold.italic>
> wrote:
>
>
>>Prof Wonmug wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:17:53 -0500, "Suzanne S. Barnhill"
>>><sbar...@mvps.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Anyone recognize the font used on the cover of "Where the Mockingbird Sang"?
>>>>See it at http://amzn.to/ajP6PE
>>>
>>>
>>>Birch?
>>
>>>http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&event=displayFontPackage&code=1009&PID=930349
>>
>>Absolutely! Good catch. Really tough from that small, low resolution
>>image.
>
>
> Well, I had a good teacher -- you! ;-)
>
> OK, I'll admit that I used Identifont. I wouldn't had have a clue
> without it.
>
> http://www.identifont.com/list?1+id+2+1CN+16+LJ+16+GE+15+439+15+6YS+15+NGZ+15+NH0+14+86Z+14+BLU+12+7V3+10+PJ4+7+27C9+7+26Z4+6+LI7+6+27CL+6+27CK+6+PSV+6+P6U+6+5D2+6+I3S+6+24KM+5+26ZC+1
>
> or http://tinyurl.com/24qhayq

I couldn't get anywhere with Identifont. Must have answered the
questions wrong!

- Ch.

> You were so helpful to me that I thought I'd try and give a little
> something back.

With interest.

Prof Wonmug

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Aug 30, 2010, 10:18:49 PM8/30/10
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On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:06:01 -0700, Character <Ch...@cters.bold.italic>
wrote:

Naw, I still have a balance due.

I entered the book title in the Restricted set of letters box. It then
only asked me questions about letters I could see. I thought all of th
questions were pretty easy.

But I stuck out trying to find a similar free font. I looked on
FontPark, but couldn't find anything like Birch.

How did you locate OptiAmadeus as almost identical to Solid Antique
Roman?

Suzanne S. Barnhill

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Aug 30, 2010, 10:22:53 PM8/30/10
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I confess I've lost confidence in Identifont. It seems that the characters
it asks about are never the ones with the most noticeable earmarks (g and M
in this case), or it asks the wrong questions (or not enough questions), and
the last few times I've tried it, all its suggestions have been wildly out
of the ballpark. Seems it worked in this case, though! Thanks again.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

"Prof Wonmug" <won...@moo.gov> wrote in message
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Suzanne S. Barnhill

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Aug 30, 2010, 10:19:44 PM8/30/10
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Yes, thanks, that's it exactly. As I feared, it's a commercial font--not
worth the price for a single very limited use, but perhaps I can find a
clone.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

"Prof Wonmug" <won...@moo.gov> wrote in message
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Prof Wonmug

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Aug 30, 2010, 10:45:00 PM8/30/10
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On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:22:53 -0500, "Suzanne S. Barnhill"
<sbar...@mvps.org> wrote:

>I confess I've lost confidence in Identifont. It seems that the characters
>it asks about are never the ones with the most noticeable earmarks (g and M
>in this case), or it asks the wrong questions (or not enough questions), and
>the last few times I've tried it, all its suggestions have been wildly out
>of the ballpark. Seems it worked in this case, though! Thanks again.

As I said earlier, entering the characters you have helps a lot. Birch
was the 3rd or 4th guess, I think, but pretty close.

Prof Wonmug

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Aug 30, 2010, 10:46:30 PM8/30/10
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On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:19:44 -0500, "Suzanne S. Barnhill"
<sbar...@mvps.org> wrote:

>Yes, thanks, that's it exactly. As I feared, it's a commercial font--not
>worth the price for a single very limited use, but perhaps I can find a
>clone.

$29 is too much? I bet you waste more than that on cookies. ;-)

It's a nice font. I was tempted to buy it myself.

Character

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Aug 31, 2010, 12:40:10 AM8/31/10
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Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
> Yes, thanks, that's it exactly. As I feared, it's a commercial font--not
> worth the price for a single very limited use, but perhaps I can find a
> clone.
>

There's an old clone around by Southern Software named Sentinal
http://www.fonts101.com/search/sentinal.aspx

- Character

Character

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Aug 31, 2010, 3:35:08 AM8/31/10
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Prof Wonmug wrote:

<snip>

> How did you locate OptiAmadeus as almost identical to Solid Antique
> Roman?

There are many websites and documents that contain lists of
font equivalents, font aliases, font lookalikes, or font clones. I've
collected and copied quite a few of them along with my own match list
that I keep adding to.

There are sites that have lists of such lists, such as:
http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/fontnames.html


I search the folder containing all these lists with an ancient Norton
DOS Utility called 'textsearch' or 'ts'. There are some more
up-to-date text search utilities available.

And before you (or anyone else) asks, I won't be posting my collection
of lists. It's a messy combination of text files, .doc files, html
files, saved web tables (which are a real mess), spreadsheets, PDFs
and some pure garbage. It's 11 MB of 230 files and I don't even know
which ones are really searchable.

- Character

Suzanne S. Barnhill

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Aug 31, 2010, 8:03:10 AM8/31/10
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Thanks for the heads-up. I did find a Birch.otf that sufficed for the
purpose--I don't know whether it is better or worse than Sentinal, but it
was okay for the few words I needed it for. FWIW, I found it at
http://fliiby.com/file/547654/xdi28ojnjf.html, which may well be a bit
shady; I'd rather have found a legitimate clone such as Sentinal, but the
deed is done now.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

"Character" <Ch...@cters.bold.italic> wrote in message
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Character

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Aug 31, 2010, 1:46:26 PM8/31/10
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Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
> Thanks for the heads-up. I did find a Birch.otf that sufficed for the
> purpose--I don't know whether it is better or worse than Sentinal, but
> it was okay for the few words I needed it for. FWIW, I found it at
> http://fliiby.com/file/547654/xdi28ojnjf.html, which may well be a bit
> shady; I'd rather have found a legitimate clone such as Sentinal, but
> the deed is done now.
>

It's hard to say just what The Birch that you downloaded is.
Remarkably, it appears to be a back-clone! It's really Sentinal,
carefully renamed to Birch! While the basic A-z 0-9 glyphs are there,
it's missing some basic punctuation,such as the single and double
'dumb' quotes, the number, plus, and equal signs, the backslash, and
some others.

BTW - What I posted was a download link for Sentinal (you have to
click on 'more details'). SSi/SSK was successfully sued by Adobe (and
Emigre) in 1999 for simply copying and renaming 1,100 of Adobe's fonts
- that is, cloning them. There is no such thing as a 'legitimate
clone', although there are, at least in the US, legitimate equivalent
fonts; redrawn, rescanned, etc.

- Character

Prof Wonmug

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Aug 31, 2010, 4:30:54 PM8/31/10
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On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:03:10 -0500, "Suzanne S. Barnhill"
<sbar...@mvps.org> wrote:

>Thanks for the heads-up. I did find a Birch.otf that sufficed for the
>purpose--I don't know whether it is better or worse than Sentinal, but it
>was okay for the few words I needed it for. FWIW, I found it at
>http://fliiby.com/file/547654/xdi28ojnjf.html, which may well be a bit
>shady; I'd rather have found a legitimate clone such as Sentinal, but the
>deed is done now.

Hmmm... degrees of shadiness?

Prof Wonmug

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Aug 31, 2010, 4:47:47 PM8/31/10
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On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:35:08 -0700, Character <Ch...@cters.bold.italic>
wrote:

Well, OK, but if you won't post it, we'll just have to keep bugging
you to search it for us! ;-)

Suzanne S. Barnhill

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Aug 31, 2010, 5:43:56 PM8/31/10
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Thanks. This is such a genuinely ugly font that I can't imagine ever wanting
to use it again, anyway. I'm the program chairman of a weekly book review
program at our public library, and each week I create a poster to advertise
the next week's review. It is very simple, says (centered, naturally):

COMING ATTRACTION
at the Tuesday Book Review & Lecture Series

[cover shot or other graphic]

Reviewed by So-and-So
Tuesday, MMMM d, yyyy
10:30 a.m.

(Giddens Conference Center, Fairhope Public Library)

For the text, I try to match the font(s) used on the book cover (for
"lectures" I try to find art and a font that suit the topic), and the poster
border sometimes picks up a color used on the cover. Very simple, but it's a
matter of pride to me to find the font if I can--partly to compensate for
the fact the >98% of my routine work uses TNR and Arial.

Ironically, this particular book is self-published and is being "discussed"
by the author (who is local). When I asked him about the font, he said he
didn't know what it was, nor did his wife, who created the cover, because
she used a template. They had tried to find out in order to use it at their
website. So I told him what it was; they may find it worthwhile to pay $29,
so some good may have come out of this for Adobe. <g>

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

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