Hey everyone,

I'm currently working on designing a logo for an up-and-coming group. I've been able to do most everything by myself so far, but now I need help. The president of the organization would like a particular font used for the text showing the organization's name. He was able to provide me with this great example I've attached, but seeing as I'm not a graphic designer by trade, I'm stumped by the font. Does anyone know the name of this font and where I might be able to get it?

Thank you all for your time!

It may not be a stock font. In professional graphics, you can do a lot of things, like convert text to a drawing and then edit the drawing. You can also edit or create custom fonts, and this means there are a lot of fonts available to purchase, and many fonts created for internal use that are not available to others.

I'll second softwerkslex's comment that it may not be a specific font. Even though there are many fonts, I suspect that the logo has a specifically modified font.

So you may have to find a close-as-possible font for your organization's president.

Now for fonts. There are several on-line sources for fonts. It's been a few years since I went looking for a specific font, but I found it available on a couple of sites. As I recall, a sample alphabet may be shown. Do a search for downloadable fonts. Some will be free and other are pay to download.

The fonts may be grouped by style or style groups. To help your search, remember a roman-style font is called serif and an arial-style font is called sans-serif. What you show is a serif-style font.

Hi,

Years ago, when I was researching my book on the Gainesville Midland Railroad here in Georgia, it happened that the city of Gainesville decided to cosmetically restore their locomotive GM #209.

I was asked to get a good font for the lettering the 209. As a result, I started with a common font (darned if I recall what it was) and sent it to a BMP (?). I then edited the DMP to get the font for the Gainesville Midland 209. I also found that over the years, the stencils changed over the years based upon different photos.

Good luck.

Doug vV

I do a little bit of sign work on the side and as others have said, it definitely could be a modified font. However, there are a lot of online tools out there for identifying fonts. Typically, they'll have a wizard that will step you through identifying characteristics of the letters and numbers that you have in front of you and will then give you some close matches. I once found a perfect match when trying to replaced a Pastor's name on a church sign. Unfortunately, I don't remember which tool I used. Just now, I googled "search for font" and got tons of hits. You might try some of those as a starting point.

Have you tried this?

https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

The font used by the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad folks is virtually identical to the Cambria font that is installed on most Windows machines. There appears to be slight modifications to one or two letters, e.g., the "tail" on top of the "A" pointing towards the letter before it. If you like the look of the font used by GSMR, give Cambria a try.

Thanks!

Zak:

The font style "Hoboken Serial" looks to be an exact or very close match to the GSMR logo.

http://www.fontpalace.com/font-download ... rial-Bold/

Hope this helps,

Bill

May I suggest creating your own identity, rather than copy-catting somebody else's work? Rather than making an exact match, how about a similar style "inspired by" type look.

Belwe seems to be a decent match:

https://www.linotype.com/1548923/belwe-family.html

-otto-

I agree with Tim above - Hoboken font. Probably Medium. Keep in mind that, for sure, the circular text has been squished lengthwise a bit by the designer to fit the space. This is common practice so if you're not using a vector drawing program, it won't be an exact match.

Well, we're not exactly copy catting. Actually, I don't know if what I'm doing could be called that at all. I'm just looking for the lettering to use in a drastically different logo. I am by no means a professional who has the time to create my own font, so I came here. I appreciate the input you all provided!

If you have an authorized / licensed copy of MS Word you can accomplish your task with little bit of work. Word will allow you to download any number of fonts then let you Kern them to your requirements. Remember your printer may produce different results than what you see on the screen.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... 52(v=vs.85).aspx

I don't think kerning is the issue. He is trying to match what appear to be unique letter forms. I gave Font Squirrel a try yesterday, and the selection of fonts it returned were rather disappointing. The asymmetrical serifs and strange slantwise O's make the example font unlike any other, and are not particularly attractive, to my eye at least. Time to try something different.

You might try railfonts.com while much maligned by purists because the "fonts" are often not exact replicas of railroad lettering, they all have a railroady look. The "Marquette Railroad Roman 5" font has some of the attributes you are looking for.

Don't use a straight-up font as a logo. Alter it. For instance the famous FedEx logotype owes a great deal to Futura font, but it's *not* Futura font. It started there but was tweaked to make it look right.

Sure, you see big companies use what seem like stock fonts. But on closer examination, even these are not. Facebook, the plainest plain-font logo out there, isn't.

But this takes serious juice to pull off without looking really tacky. What is this juice? A dedicated graphics department with lawyers whose mission in life is defending the wordmark from...incursions. Any big brand has a style guide - Linkedin has a whole website. Click "Visual identity" and check out all the cringeworthy mutilations of their logo. Click "Typography" and notice how the "font" in the logo is not used anywhere else! They have chosen fonts which complement, but are nowhere near, their logotype.

I bet that never occurred to you.



But consider the opposite. Walk into CNN's world headquarters and find the distinctive font spelling MEN and WOMEN. Go to Henry Ford Museum and find "Cafeteria" in the Ford swirl. At the IBM website, see all the section titles in the 8-bar font. Never seen that? Damn right!

Misuse dilutes the logo. Seen too much, it becomes just another word.

Here's the trouble: In a small organization, you can't stop it. Some egotistical fool with a nickel's knowledge of fonts and nothing about branding -- will find your font and he's off to the races. Now it's on signs, internal documents, newsletter headings, etc. The careful kerning in your logo is now disregarded, he just uses whatever letterspacing MIcrosoft Word gives him. Which damages your logo:

Doesn't feel quite right, does it?

Here's how you do it. Sit in Adobe Illustrator or similar program and create an entirely line-art-based artwork logo. Based on a font perhaps, but with more elements, as GSMR did in the above logo. Why?

- it lets you escape the "Plain font as logotype" trap.
- It lets you have it *exactly* the way you want it. Get the kerning right, not system defaults. Make the serifs different. Have the stroke of the final "S" underline the entire word. Whatever makes your logo irresistably cool and sets it apart.
- It shuts down Mr. "I'm so clever, I'll just get the font".
- It lifts copyright off the font. Turns out, shapes aren't copyrightable. Retrace over a font and you now have a completely new piece of art which you control 100%.