The lettering appears on the cover of the first "Elvis Presley" album
and "London Calling" by the Clash.
Unfortunately, neither of these pieces of lettering are 'fonts', in
the sense of a typeface (a set of letters for use by a typesetter or
computer typesetter or program). Instead, they have been hand-lettered
by an artist or designer. This has always been a common way of
producing lettering for one-off uses of this kind, especially where
uniformity of characters was not the intention. The giveaway is that
different instances of the same character are noticably different;
although some fonts provide alternate characters for some letters, the
Clash cover (for example) uses three different L's and three different
N's.
This makes things difficult for you, because there's no font which you
can buy and use. The only possibility would be if a more recent
typographer had created a font based on this lettering. This sort of
thing happens all the time, but while I can't say for certain that
there's no such font, I'm reasonably confident it hasn't been done in
this case.
Nevertheless, depending on what you want to do with the font, you have
various options.
What the Font (http://www.myfonts.com/whatthefont/) is a utility that
allows you to upload a sample of text and identifies similar fonts.
Unsurprisingly, it doesn't track this typeface down. But it suggests
some fonts that aren't too different:
Bilbo Black
http://www.myfonts.com/FontStyle35205.html
Ad Lib
http://www.myfonts.com/FontStyle475.html
Another good utility is Identifont (http://www.identifont.com), which
allows you to answer questions about a font; if you tell it what
letters you have available, it restricts quesions to those letters. It
suggests three fonts, any of which would be convincing to a casual
observer.
Dingle Hopper
http://www.identifont.com/show?4TH
Keener
http://www.identifont.com/show?4U5
Boink
http://www.identifont.com/show?3CB
I also found, from searching on retro fonts, this font which might
suit you:
Jumping Bean
http://www.fontdiner.com/menu_doggie.html
If your intent is to produce a pastiche of the album cover, but you
don't want to produce hand-lettering, a plausible strategy would be to
use a font that's similar but regularly formed, such as
OL Smoker Bold Title
http://www.identifont.com/show?53E
Once you've chosen a similar font, you can then distort each letter
shape in turn in Photoshop or another graphics editing package to
create the effect you're looking for.
Finally, you have two further options: hand lettering the text you
need, or creating your own custom font.
Other information:
The designer of the Clash cover was Ray Lowry:
http://www.superseventies.com/ac21londoncalling.html
http://www.starvingwife.co.uk/ray0.html
I can't establish the designer of the 1956 Presley album, though it
was hugely successful and the bold typography was considered
innovative. It wasn't normal to credit cover designers at that time.
http://www.philsfonts.com/ has a very wide range of fonts, and will ID
fonts if you send a sample to info@philsfonts.com, or phone them
toll-free at toll-free at 1-800-424-2977
This question has come up a couple of times on Usenet. One thread is:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=8d8kvv%24mt7%241%40slb7.atl.mindspring.net&rnum=6&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dlondon%2520calling%2520font%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tab%3Dwg
Pictures of the covers:
Elvis Presley
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/british/images/vc265.jpg
The Clash - London Calling
http://classicsdelrock.dreamers.com/imatges/clash-london.jpg
search terms
In Google Image Search:
clash london calling
elvis presley album cover
In Google:
london calling cover designer
retro fonts
I hope this goes some way towards helping you find a solution. Thanks
for using Google Answers.
alisonscott-ga |
