The Quest for Fonts...
First thing I have to say is that Identifont is an extremely cool and really useful font-finding utility. The next thing to say is that despite the fact it's extremely cool, it didn't help me find the two fonts that I've been scrabbling around to find for the last week. So this is where you guys come in. I figure maybe you can help me (since my life-long love, Mr. Internet, has completely let me down).
So here we have the first font as it decorates the front cover of the July issue of The Face. Now the weird thing with this font is that I have spent weeks fiddling around with a logo with the word 'dirty' in it. Literally weeks. After about twenty passes over the logo, desperately trying to get it looking roughly accurate, I suddenly stumble upon this issue of The Face. Sitting there in my sitting room. The two 'dirty's look identical. I'm the most derivative designer alive. Nonetheless, now I want to find the damn font. It's all through the issue.. Can you help?
Now the other font I'm looking for is - coincidentally - also in the same issue of The Face, although it's not where I saw it originally. It's a highly stylised psuedo-cursive that looks a bit like Neon. The best place to see it is on page 153 in the 'tracks' section. It's the font that they use for the name of the reviewer at the end of each review. I've seen it all over the place recently, but I can't seem to find out much about it online. Please help!
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
Have you looked through the t26 and emigre foundries? Most "directional" fonts come from there... also itcfonts and fonts.com. The first shares features with Citizen at Emigre, but it's more normal. If the tracks font is the same in the current issue, it look very similar to the one used on the recent Bjork albums/stuff.
→ Posted by: Chris at August 10, 2003 10:37 AM
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/t26/oeiller/regular/
Found using the far, far cooler
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
after I cleaned up the image a bit
>>
→ Posted by: shim at August 10, 2003 11:11 AM
Hmm. That's a surprise. _The Face_ has, for time immemorial, been famous for using custom fonts. What else did we have Neville Brody for in the 1980s? (And where is he now?) It's an index of the declining relevance of _The Face_ that they buy off the shelf. (Declaration of conflict of interest: I interviewed Brody and wrote a storyette for _The Face_ lo those many years ago on novelty fonts.)
→ Posted by: Joe Clark at August 11, 2003 12:24 AM
Awesome! Thanks to everyone concerned. To shim - that's pretty amazing, thanks so much. It's exactly the right font and thanks to Chris for pointing out that it might be the same font as the one used on Bjork's latest album (Vespertine) - I'm not sure they're identical, but it's pretty bloody close...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at August 11, 2003 8:31 AM
You're right, the vespertine font is different. I'm busy ordering lots of proper paper catalogues of fonts, as it's the only easy way to browse. I think The Face had to use custom fonts in those days - things like t26 and chank didn't exist. Now, if you've made a weird font, it seems easier to sell. Anyway, unless they've changed recently, I've heard The Face gets on the Internet via individual dial up modems. Can we live at this speed?
→ Posted by: Chris at August 13, 2003 10:20 AM
The script font mentioned on page 153 in the "tracks" section is my font FIG Script. You can download a pdf on my site or try it out live at myfonts.com. Hope this helps.
Best,
Eric O.
→ Posted by: Eric Olson at August 13, 2003 1:36 PM
Tom, according to Grafik (once Graphics International) August issue, the 'dirty' font in the latest The Face make-over is indeed Oeiller, although in a slightly customized version. Ciao
→ Posted by: Paolo Colonna at August 13, 2003 6:40 PM
Thanks everyone! That's an incredible response far in excess of what I was expecting. Thanks for the information - I shall proceed to purchase them forthwith!
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at August 17, 2003 10:18 PM