Comments on: font sleuthing

Question: font sleuthing

of strange foe — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 11:55:53 -0800

Could anyone identify the font used on this book cover? TIA!

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 12:14:48 -0800

If you look closely, there are two similar but different fonts used on that book cover: one for the title and one for the author.

I tried Identifont but it didn't find a match.

By: helvetica

helvetica — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 12:31:43 -0800

Hattifattener; it looks like the title is either set in all swash caps, or the author is set in small caps.

I'm looking through some books, will get back to you if I find anything. Did you try looking through the title pages of the book? Sometimes typefaces get listed in there.

By: Alex Handcoding

Alex Handcoding — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 13:01:34 -0800

If you can get a bigger image of the cover, I'd recommend trying WhatTheFont - it's an online font-identification tool that allows users to upload an image and the software figures out the font from there. It's been pretty reliable for me.

By: greatgefilte

greatgefilte — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 13:04:45 -0800

I second Alex's suggestion. I tried it with the image you linked to, but I think the text is too small and the compression too lossy to get a good result.

By: helvetica

helvetica — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 13:10:56 -0800

Well, I've had a good look but couldn't find anything exact. Monotype has a font called Gallia which is probably the closest thing out there. I wonder if the display type might have been done specifically for the cover design even though there are similar faces out there.

By: helvetica

helvetica — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 13:15:52 -0800

On closer inspection, Gallia is the style used for the author's line. So I would guess that there is a swash version of this font out there somewhere. The swashes might have never been digitized.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 13:42:30 -0800

i took the image and used a sharpening filter before boosting the contrast, then sent the result to whatthefont (linked above). it didn't have a perfect match, but the best suggestions were Monotype Gallia and ATGalia. which is what other's have said.

if you want to try, image is here (in a minute, when i've uploaded it).

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 17:27:44 -0800

You'll note that this shows both swash and non-swash styles as being Monotype Gallia.

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 17:32:12 -0800

Aaah... the "lowercase" class has the swash, it looks like.

By: patgas

patgas — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 20:49:28 -0800

I just thought I'd mention the Typophile Type ID board, as they've helped me with some fonts in the past.

By: helvetica

helvetica — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 09:31:35 -0800

basicchannel: just out of curiosity, how did you end up there from the Galia links on the Monotype site?

By: of strange foe

of strange foe — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 11:14:08 -0800

And I thought this would be like a shot in the dark! Thank you, you guys are wonderful!