Font Geeks of MeFi, Lend Me Your Paws

March 27, 2023 9:04 AM

I'm making a fake car badge in mockery of the "Police Interceptor" or "Pursuit Vehicle" sort you sometimes see in the U.S. Only, mine will say "Fursuit Vehicle". Assume for the purposes of this question that this is a joke, and is funny. Looking for a free TTF or OTF font that's a close match to the original. (Example pics inside.)

Here's an example of what I'm trying to ape.

I have a 3D model in OpenSCAD that's reasonably close.

This uses the MADE Outer Sans font, which I understand to be free for personal use, but which requires a license for commercial use.

While I don't have any plans to make this a product (and will post the OpenSCAD sources to Thingiverse and elsewhere under CC BY-SA 4.0), I'd like to find a visually-similar free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech font so users of the STL files won't be surprised by licensing hassles.

OpenSCAD understands TTF and OTF fonts.

I don't need an absolutely exact match; I'm just looking for something close enough that the joke will work (or, at least, not flop because of typography). Anybody know any good, free alternatives?

posted by sourcequench to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

I think Eurostile is a close match.
posted by blacktshirtandjeans at 9:31 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

+1 Eurostile. Microgramma is also extremely similar.
posted by adamrice at 10:56 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Road Quest has a great shot of exactly this. Taking a screencap and running it through What The Font may help, too.
posted by xedrik at 11:46 AM on March 27, 2023

LoadingReadyRun (the folks that made Road Quest, linked by xedrik) used to sell a sticker set that included a "Fursuit Vehicle" sticker as part of the merch they had for Road Quest. Unfortunately it looks like it got sold out as their store doesn't have them for sale anymore, but they might be able to put you in touch with whoever made theirs to help with a font match if you want to go really deep on this.

Seconding that Eurostile Bold Extended or Microgramma look quite close. I suspect that they'd at least work well for this even if they're not an exact match, especially if you thickened the outlines a bit.
posted by Aleyn at 2:55 PM on March 27, 2023

Response by poster: I loves me some LRR, and it was indeed on Road Quest that I first encountered this gag.

Eurostile and Microgramma are both very close, and either would work visually. However, they both have "free for personal use, pay for commercial use" licenses (much like the MADE Outer Sans I initially picked).

In an ideal universe, I'm looking for something with a CC license, in the public domain, or similar.
posted by sourcequench at 3:03 PM on March 27, 2023

Best answer: Anybody is a bit less geometric than Eurostile but should suit your purposes just fine
posted by O9scar at 12:51 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

As an aside, font copyright is a weird area, and I believe that if the files you distribute render the font out in a way that you can't reconstruct the original glyph data from them, you would likely be okay with even the ones with a restrictive license. But probably not a bad idea to go with a freely-licensed one anyway, as I don't know whether OpenSCAD embeds the font files or just renders them out to shapes.
posted by Aleyn at 12:35 PM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Final design using the Anybody font: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5983416

Thanks to everyone who answered!
posted by sourcequench at 2:36 PM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]