Help me find a font!

Hey, you remember how the hot dog stand at the skating rink always had a backlit menuboard that looked like this:



So, I want to make a sign like it. But I've looked and looked and cannot find a font that matches those kinds of letters. Can you guys help me out?

As a certified professional graphic designer, here are my thoughts...

You're going to be setting the stage in so many other ways that getting lost in the EXACT font is a waste of time and effort. Just use Helvetica. It's a close enough match.

When people walk into your hot dog joint, that font is the last thing they'll care about.

Hey -- what a cool idea! Don't forget to leave some letters out for more realism.

As a lover of type I understand your desire to get this right. Ask the question on Typophile and they will identify it in a heartbeat. They are v. good!

http://typophile.com/forum

I looked one up before Alvaro made his insightful post, so I'm just gonna go ahead and post the best I could come up with anyway in case it helps at all.

http://www.webpagepublicity.com/free-fonts-a4.html

Take a look at Arena Black and Arena Black Extended. I think one of those will work well in all caps (maybe not any better than Helvetica, but your call).

Regardless, I suspect "that look" may depend more than anything on slight irregularities in the spacing between characters.

Cool idea!

I personally like dafont. They have a lot of fonts for almost any need.

You might do a search for "Alte Haas Grotesk".. that's a font that looks pretty similar to menuboard letters (it's what I used on my menuboard project).

What's weird is those prices on the menu seem kind of reasonable.

And have a few letters smaller, or E's replaced by backwards 3's....

Out-voted. Oh well, designers can be soooo obsessive.

Thanks for the suggestion - I signed up and asked at that forum. Let's see what happens!

Well sure, I COULD use absolutely any font I wanted. I could make a menu any number of ways. But I'm picky when it comes to retro stuff; I like getting as close as possible to what I'm looking for. There are undoubtedly better uses of time and effort, to be sure - but I don't consider this search so useless as to call it wasteful.

Actually, that DOES look strikingly similar. Absent any advice from the other forum I posted at, I'll go with this one. Thanks!

Perhaps wasteful was not the right term. For that I apologize. My point, one that I see too often in graphic design, is people look for a font to do too much. Fonts matter far less to me than concept, composition, scale, color, texture, rhythm, etc.

If you want to chase after the exact font, I'm not trying to stop you. I was merely trying to point out these other issues are far more important to the look and feel of your design.

If you have this thing so nailed down that this is the icing on the cake, then more power to you, you are a more thorough designer than I.

Sorry, as someone who has a degree in Graphic design, I have to disagree. I will spend absolute HOURS searching for a collection of fonts that "feel right together" for a given project. And I can spend DAYS looking for the right font for a logo design.

That's part of why I'm so glad I designed a reusable template for my vendor art. The fonts are always the same.

Logo design, sure. That's a whole other thing. There the font is a primary focus.

Here, we're talking about something completely different.

As I said, if the hot dog motif was pulled off well, and the sign was in Helvetica, nobody would would walk out muttering about how the whole thing was ruined by that type choice.

I'll go one step further. Whether the font is Arena or Helvetica or whatever will have a negligible impact on the visitors experience.

no it's the attention to detail that sell the closer to 100% correct everything is the better the job of detailing and building close is ok for a newbie builder but if your making stuff intened to be around awhile you need the exact font,or wall paper ect ect building is matching the perfect build with the perfect texture

I'm pretty new here. Looks like I've got a lot to learn.

I'll just be safe and stick to crayons.

One thing that will help make the sign look realistic is to use
various kerning (spacing) between the letters and numbers,
just like someone put them on the board by hand, one by one.

- Infrared

If you're using photoshop, add a layer style to the type layer, with a bit if a rounded bevel, and a dropshadow. (that's what I would do).

Arial Rounded MT and MS Sans Serif would both work well. Arial Rounded has a funky almost dimensional look to it that would make the sign pop. Given the limits of SL rendering, subtleties in fonts don't usually work that well. I find that the sledgehammer approach often looks better.

IMHO. YMMV.

wait till you watch I'm-an-ex-print-designer-now-working-on-the-web designers counting pixels

Sometimes you don't have to match exactly - sometimes you do. For those times that you do, try http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/. Upload an image of some text and WhatTheFont will try to recognise it.

(Didn't work for this menu, but I have had great success with larger samples)

BTW - As an I'm-an-ex-DOS-programmer-now-working-on-the-web designer, I fall into the "OMG! I can choose serif OR sans-serif! Wow, how much more choice do I need?" school of design

I would like the Meatball Boat, French Fries and a Diet Pepsi. Can I get a slice of lemon in that?

I once saw a drag queen named Helvetica Bold on television.

Are you opening a food venue?

I dont know what that font is, but I'll take the cookies, a chili dog... um a cheeseburgar and.. uh why not.. some fries. Um, do you have coke?

Another useful site for help in identifying fonts is www.identifont.com.

This site will enable you to type in the text you have a sample of and ask you questions about the shapes of various parts of various letters. It works pretty well for me fairly often.

Images for use at whatthefont.com should be a single line of text, and the letters should not overlap. This image under discussion here is not real sharp and crisp, so even if you cropped out a piece of it it might not give real good results.

Speaking of font ident...

many years ago I came across a font that was little kids playing in letters. I have yet to find this font again. The ones i do find are not the ones I was looking for...

I paid a lot for it at one point but now.. is lost in the big HD meltdown incident...

so if by chance anyone knows it..