Hi,

Well, I have many many fonts I have installed in my computer to use for laser engraving. But I am missing a few of the basic ones, which never has been a problem, till now!

I have a customer that wants me to match signs he had made by someone else last year. I think, Block, just standard block. But when I go online to find just standard block, I can't. Is there another name for this font? It looks to be very fine lined, so I am thinking condensed light.

Any one have any suggestions what else to look under? It figures , this job is for my sons school, so it was suppose to be a easy one, I have been font hunting most of the day!!! :(

Thanks to anyone that can help me find the font! :)

It is called Helvetica, probably Helvetica Light. It should be on almost any computer.

You may also find it under US Block.

New Hermes is the only one I know that calles it Block Normal.

Philadelphia, PA (Really Bensalem)

Harvey's Sub Page When you finally understand it completely... it changes.

Harvey & Aallen,

If you can't find Helvetica - I believe Arial is a close match also.

Yes, you are right, it looks close to Helvetica, not exact, but I think close enough. I will do some more looking, and playing with it. I am finishing this tomorrow, no matter what! LOL Spent to much time on it already. :)

Next time, I will just say, here are my fonts, pick one! LOL

these sites might help in the futher
http://www.identifont.com/index.html
or
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

I found this free font viewer on the web and can't believe what all it does for being free.

I have thousands of fonts and you can only have a few hundred installed at one time to avoid problems.

It sounds like overkill but when you want to recreate a logo there are minor variations between fonts.

What is great about this viewer is you can view uninstalled and installed fonts. You can also view font cds with it. You can enter your wording for a sample and scroll through your fonts to find an exact match. You can then install or uninstall it with one click.

It has a sorter by serif and script but it isnt really very helpful. I spent a Saturday over a year ago sorting the fonts into main category folders like roman thin, arial bold italic etc. That way you may have thousands of fonts but only have to look at similar fonts that are a close match. I often see an unusual font and surprise myself by finding an exact match in seconds.

It is called "The Font Thing" by an individual named Sue Fisher. If it doesnt display your font list right away there is a refresh button you have to click. It works with xp even though it is not listed.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~scef/tft.html
or you can find it at download.com

lj

That looks like it will work great! Of course I have tons of fonts loaded and do spend a lot of time searching for the "right" font. I should use a font viewer more.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I'll be darned if I can remember the issue, but in EJ, or A&E, there was just an article about font management, and installing your fonts OFF the root, in order to speed up your computer. With 1450 fonts, when I find the article, I'll be doing it.

By the way, when I used Windows 98, I had trouble with too many fonts, however, with XP, I've been using 1400+ with no NOTICIBLE problems at all.

Justin

Here is the link.

http://www.unleash.com/articles/fonts/fontmanage.html

dave

Dear Justin:

Your first guess was correct. The font Management article appeared in EJ (Sept. 02).

I don't know if everyone is aware of it but EJ's entire 29 year archive of articles is cross indexed and available on the web site. You can type in a key word such as "FONT" and it will display every article available on that topic. The following URL will take you directly to the key word search:

www.engraversjournal.com/searchtopics.php

Try it -- You'll like it!

Mike,

Now if only the cross reference would actually link to the article-------that would be the bomb!

but for now I will have to be content to reference my 10 year stash of EJ's

In my own experience, i have used what the font on www.myfonts.com and the problem with it is that it will only show you the fonts they sell. I have used other font recognition softwares but until now i've had the best results with abby fine reader (you can find it in download.com), it's a OCR software but it also recognizes fonts.

My best advice would be to use Bitstream Font navigator to sort and manage your fonts, it can work with adobe type manager so you can view your type 1 fotns too. You can sort them by style or format, making it easier to find a particular font. You usually get a version of font navigator with coreldraw since version 8.

I hope I've been useful.