A font question...

October 15, 2009 10:24 PM

What's a good free font that I can use to replicate the mechanical font used on boarding passes and concert tickets? It generally looks like it's made up of dots.

I need to design a fake boarding pass looking invitation slip for an event, and want the font to be authentic looking. What font should I use, and where can I download it free?

posted by lottie to media & arts (7 comments total)

Any of these work?
posted by The Deej at 10:27 PM on October 15

dot matrix fonts?
posted by amyms at 10:28 PM on October 15

jinx, The Deej!
posted by amyms at 10:29 PM on October 15

You might like the "Fake Receipt" font from Larabie Fonts (here's a different download page at dafont.com). Uppercase letters only. It's free.

(Have you ever seen the images generated by the Concert Ticket Maker at says-it.com? If so, then you've seen the font in action. The "original" style ticket maker uses Fake Receipt, as mentioned in the site's FAQ. I'm not sure what font the "modern" style ticket maker uses -- it has lowercase letters, and it definitely looks very fitting/familiar for a concert ticket context.)

If you need lowercase letters, then the list posted by The Deej and amyms has plenty of choices. There's also the appropriately-named "Dot Matrix" font from Moonbase Press and probably a bunch of others out there.
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 11:55 PM on October 15

You may want to have a look at monospaced fonts, terminal fonts, and OCR-A to narrow down what you're looking for. I'm hesitant to suggest dot matrix fonts since, at least in my experience in the US, I can't recall seeing true dot matrix being used on airport/airline documents in 20 or 30 years, in fact even then I think they used some sort of high-output daisy wheel technology. Here, one of the sans-serif monospaced fonts would be most believable.
posted by crapmatic at 4:20 AM on October 16

(actually to be accurate maybe it's line printer technology I'm thinking of, but now I do recall seeing dot matrix tickets and carbons around 1988-1994, but I realize it might be different in Australia).
posted by crapmatic at 4:25 AM on October 16

Thank you all so much!
posted by lottie at 7:36 PM on October 16