Is it possible to preview a font in a gigantic size?

April 17, 2015 11:42 AM

ont-nerd-filter: I'm doing an art project that requires an enormous ➌ and ➒ (those characters specifically, not just a circle with the numeral inside it) in specifically either Helvetica Neue or Freight Sans. Is there a site that will do this for me?

I don't have the font(s) installed, and the font(s) appear to be a premium-costing kind, and costs more for the font than the entire project is worth, so I'm wondering if there's a site that will let me perhaps preview the font in just those characters, but specifically those characters (not merely a 3 or 9) and as a really large preview as in, screen-sized. I can just screen-shot it from there. The project won't be for sale.

Or, is there an option to accomplishing this that I'm not thinking of? Might Kinko's/etc do this?

My secondary goal after this is accomplished is to print out the characters onto a large paper, but I can already do this myself for free once I have the large image, but I just need to figure out how to get the large image.

posted by Quarter Pincher to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Are you trying to compare the two fonts, or just use one of them? Helvetica Neue is installed on OSX by default. I just made both symbols in Pages at 900 px in about two seconds.
posted by General Malaise at 2:07 PM on April 17, 2015

Response by poster: My intended use is to print each character in both fonts, on a really large sheet of paper (4 printings total). The only use for the fonts is for these two specific characters and no other reason. The idea of previewing them is to create a screenshot image of the preview in order to make an image file I can print..
posted by Quarter Pincher at 2:12 PM on April 17, 2015

That's no use to someone who specifically mentions not owning the fonts. Message me and I can give you raster versions for Helvética Neue.
posted by turkeyphant at 2:14 PM on April 17, 2015

Response by poster: I just realized that an online word processor might do this, and it turns out that Google Docs does have Helvetica Neue, but not Freight Sans. I was able to get screencaps huge (325px) versions of the ➌ and ➒ as desired with the HN font, but just need FS..
posted by Quarter Pincher at 2:28 PM on April 17, 2015

Best answer: Okay nevermind.. after previewing FS fairly large on Adobe's site, compared to a shrunken version of HN, I think they may be too identical to tell much difference for my purposes, so large versions of HN should do fine. Apologies for the needless errands :-3
posted by Quarter Pincher at 2:42 PM on April 17, 2015

When I request a ➌ in Helvetica Neue on my Mac, it substitutes Zapf Dingbats.
posted by scruss at 8:20 PM on April 17, 2015

… and digging further, Google Docs substitutes MS-Gothic. Checking on Linotype's site, the glyphs aren't in the font, so whatever you're seeing, it isn't Helvetica Neue. Same for Freight Sans: it doesn't have U+278C “Dingbat Negative Circled Sans-Serif Digit Three” defined.

It wouldn't be tremendously hard for someone to put white Helvetica Neue 3 and 9 in black circles for you, though.
posted by scruss at 4:38 AM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]