The Case of the Unknown Font

August 12, 2010 9:59 AM

What the heck font is this? These are screencaps I've taken from the tv series Sherlock. If you haven't seen the show yet (and want to), I'd suggest not clicking; I think that all of them taken together would give away some of the fun of the series, if not exactly the plot. If you have seen it (or don't care), and you're good at font recognition, please help!
posted by tzikeh to media & arts (17 answers total)

You realize they're not all the same font?
posted by zadcat at 10:03 AM on August 12, 2010

Yeah, I just realized that the ones that say "wrong!" and "You know where to find me" are one font, and the "wet" "dry" "married" and "RACHE" are another.

Still don't know the first one. A friend thinks that the second one is ITC Johnston, which apparently costs $90, which I'm not spending on it.

Blerg.
posted by tzikeh at 10:15 AM on August 12, 2010

You can get P22 Johnston Underground regular for $25.
posted by zadcat at 10:17 AM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

myfonts.com says ITC Johnston Medium for unhappily married.

I don't get a good hit for the other pictures: too few letters and the images are too low resolution.
posted by flif at 10:19 AM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

That "You know where to find me" one could be Priva. That's a distinctive lowercase k; it looks like it might be more curved than the one in Priva, but that just might be an artifact of the low resolution.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:22 AM on August 12, 2010

flif - yeah, I did the best I could with the images. Sorry 'bout that. But--myfonts.com "says"? Can you just feed it images and it will tell you?

I'm getting a lot of possibles on the "You know where to find me" one -- everything from Frutiger to Myriad to Trade Gothic.
posted by tzikeh at 10:27 AM on August 12, 2010

tzikeh: "--myfonts.com "says"? Can you just feed it images and it will tell you?"

Yes: WhatTheFont @ MyFonts.
posted by sharkfu at 10:31 AM on August 12, 2010

http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

But like he said, it does better with higher resolution images with a lot of letters.
posted by RobotHero at 10:32 AM on August 12, 2010

Yeah, I wish I could get better resolution. I don't know how. I have .avi files, and I've just used "grab" to get the screencaps. Is there a better way? Can I export a frame at a higher res?

The other problem is that the words are actually never perfectly sharp on-screen.
posted by tzikeh at 10:39 AM on August 12, 2010

Gill Sans was inspired by Johnston [wiki] so it looks very similar. Chances are pretty good that you have Gill Sans already installed on your computer.
posted by kpmcguire at 10:56 AM on August 12, 2010

I put up some higher resolution pictures for you if you want to crop them and try again at WhatTheFont: font album (click each one to get the higher res version)
posted by sharkfu at 11:03 AM on August 12, 2010

... holy cow, sharkfu - can you explain how you did that?
posted by tzikeh at 11:13 AM on August 12, 2010

kpmcguire - I do have Gill Sans; it does look quite similar but I would like to get the exact font. Thank you though!
posted by tzikeh at 11:19 AM on August 12, 2010

The 'you know where to find me' one is definitely not Frutiger, Myriad, or Trade Gothic. The 'k' is wrong. It's more like - but is not actually - Museo Sans.
posted by zjacreman at 11:21 AM on August 12, 2010

Gill Sans is the in-house font used by the BBC, so it jumped out at me when I watched the show as I remember being surrounded by it daily! It's also similar to the London Underground font - there;s a freeware equivalent called Paddington.
posted by mippy at 3:35 PM on August 12, 2010

can you explain how you did that?

Those screencaps are from a 720p (1280x720) release. The standard XviD releases are scaled down to 624x352. Get the x264 version next time, although they will be 2.19 GB instead of 700 MB.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:07 AM on August 13, 2010

It's probably screencapped off BBC iPlayer.
posted by mippy at 11:41 AM on August 13, 2010