Anybody know where to get artwork for the Signature Plastics standard font?

[norbauer]

Following up on the successful Galaxy Class group buy (and waiting for production), I'm working on a new key cap set with Signature Plastics/PimpMyKeyboard. I'll announce more details soon in an IC thread, but suffice it to say that this one is going to use the Signature Plastics standard double-shot font on DCS caps. This is the same font used in HyperFuse, Retro DSA, etc., etc.

Melissa at SP says that Arial is a close match, but I was wondering if anyone has Illustrator or CAD artwork for that particular legend set that I could use in creating a mock-up.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[Puddsy]

It's Arial

It's in the DSA retro thread somwhere

[codyeatworld]

For the Hyperfuse mockups I used Helvetica for the alphas/numbers.
Any symbols that didn't match up I would look for a close font or design it myself.

Arial rounded for the modifiers.

[jacobolus]

It’s quite certainly not just Arial. It is however somewhat similar.

edit:
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=40501.0#post_PP
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=49524.msg1072106#msg1072106

According to people in various geekhack comments, the WYSE font was some variant on some standard engraving font used on Gorton pantograph machines. (Gorton was a company which made machine tools, including machines for engraving letters in metal. Back in the days before computer controlled milling machines, the way to precisely reproduce something like letters when cutting metal was to use a “pantograph” which would let you cut an identical shape to some traced pattern; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph)

http://gorton-machine.org/forms/form_933/index.html

http://gorton-machine.org/forms/form_1309d/index.html


Though actually some of these look a bit closer:


http://gorton-machine.org/forms/form_1309/index.html



* * *

DIN or fonts inspired by DIN are also not quite the same, but could be a good stylistic match, e.g.:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/fontfont/din-round-pro/
http://www.fontshop.com/blog/newsletters/july10a/pdf/ff_din_round.pdf

There are a bunch of other reasonable choices, like the VAG Rounded used by Apple on their keyboards, or Gotham Rounded which Matt3o used for the recent Granite keycap set.

[norbauer]

matt3o also pointed out to me that Gotham Rounded (which I just happen to own) is a close match. My objective is only to make a mock-up, so an exact match isn't important.

I also dug up a CAD resource I have from Moz that includes what appear to be traces of the SP standard font. I forget where he posted it originally, so I uploaded a copy here:
http://1drv.ms/UpUnMk

[Wildcard]

Really good info here. I recall seeing this before and did some research to see what common fonts matched. Gotham Medium appears to be close, but considering how the font is actually engraved (using a rounded cutting tool) the Gotham Rounded appears to be an ideal choice.

[jacobolus]

I also dug up a CAD resource I have from Moz that includes what appear to be traces of the SP standard font. I forget where he posted it originally, so I uploaded a copy here:
http://1drv.ms/UpUnMk

Nope, that one is just Arial. The symbols on the number row are particularly far away from those on SP doubleshots.

[norbauer]

I also dug up a CAD resource I have from Moz that includes what appear to be traces of the SP standard font. I forget where he posted it originally, so I uploaded a copy here:
http://1drv.ms/UpUnMk

Nope, that one is just Arial. The symbols on the number row are particularly far away from those on SP doubleshots.

Damn. Oh well. As Wildcard suggested, I think Gotham Rounded is a nice option in that case, since it creates the end line endpoints as the rounded cutting tool used to make the tooling.