This is what I've been working on the past couple days. It's a sign for a coal dealer in Cohoes, directly across the Hudson River from Rensselaer Polytechnic in Troy, NY.
My son, Will, modeled it for the RR club there while he was a student. Unfortunately it accidently got knocked off the layout and crunched. Fortunately we now have photographs showing the previously unseen sign on the building. He is just finishing up a second model of the structure and is planning to silkscreen the large sign onto the rough surface of the structure to avoid decal silvering. I offered to "letterbash" the sign for him to use as a pattern. "Letterbashing" is a technique I've been developing to make generic computer typefaces look more like hand lettering that a signwriter would do.
Here a short outline of how the project went:
This was the only photo the club thought we had in our collection that showed the sign. It's very low res. Enlarging it to a size big enough to try to determine the style of lettering was not promising, especially trying to see what was in that shape below the name and partially hidden behind the foreground utility pole, but it did give the overall proportions.
Previously I'd letterbashed stuff by selecting approximate computer typefaces and tweaking them with GIMP, a free open source graphics program similar to Photoshop, to more closely match a prototype sign. That works fine if the actual final GIMP lettering size is close to the size needed for the model, but if it needs to be resized more than a little bit because it's too big or too small, the final version may get pixelated and look jagged.
Since I didn't have the model in hand, I tried a vector program this time. That way Will can resize as much as needed and the lettering and artwork will remain sharp and smooth. I hadn't worked with this program before, so there was a lot of trial and error experimenting going on.
About the time we thought it was figured out, the club found another, sharper B&W photo of the sign. Now the lettering and the 'logo beneath it were more legible.
And a member found a small version of the lettering on the oval part of the logo on these porcelain signs.
I tried combining the two structure photos in GIMP to get one complete pattern. It's sort of close. The red lines line up on both photos, but the perspective would not quite line up no matter what I tried. The green lines show some of the misaligned parts. Even if I did get everything aligned, there was no way of determining which photo's perspective was more 'correct'.
So I went with the B&W version. Skipping the tedious details, unless anyone is interested, here's the result tacked onto the wall. It's not exact, but pretty close. The sign image is a negative that Will can use to make the photo silkscreen.
The letterbashing on F.B.PECK COAL CO. is hard to see with no reference for comparison. You might wonder what's the difference. The differences between the intial typeface and the lettering on that sign are very subtle.
Here is a different example where the changes are more readily noticeable. The upper lettering is an unaltered typeface right off my computer. The lower sign is that font after "Letterbashing". The effect is that these letters were created to fill their allotted space, here the space between the windows. If you look, the letters are not merely stretched horizontally to fill the area. If that was all that was done the vertical strokes of each letter would also have ben expanded in proportion to the overall stretch of that letter. The result would have been a bunch of letters all the same overall width, but each with varying stroke widths - not a convincing image.
If you look at the lower "I" it hasn't changed at all. The "H" next to it is just a little wider overall yet its strokes are the same size as the "I". The "S" next to that has gotten quite a bit wider and changed its look too, but the strokes match the rest. Compare the other letters and inaddition to the overall width alterations, the "A"'s top serif is different, the "R" has a different tail. The "G" got a tail. These changes make a sign that looks like it belongs on this wall because the letters were made for this wall, like a signwriter would do. Some of the other changes also back date the lettering a bit to make an older sign. Little differences make signs that fit their time and location.
Good info Bill!
I hate to admit it but I noticed the differences at once. I think the reason is my sensitivity to type, color, and other nonsense resulting from decades of cranking out rags. Uh, mags. I also know it takes a little time to get such nicely balanced results. -- Russ
Nice work, Bill.
Volker
Very nice work, but we have discussed this before!
Paul
Thanks Chuck and Volker.
Russ, Naturally it goes without saying you'd notice even pico differences between any typography and hand lettering. That was too obvious to even bring up. :)
Paul, Yes the topic has been presented before, but the technique is still evolving. GIMP played only a small role in the project this time, the bulk of the work was done with Inkscape. Inkscape is not at all new, except to me. I am finding somethings can be done much more directly with vectors to modify individual letters in ways that got pretty convoluted with GIMP. The hope is if the process gets simple enough more people will give it a try. As far as we know, there is no usable photo of the prototype sign that can be simply copied and scaled. The model it is going on deserves a sign closer to the real thing, and this is one way to do that.
I have recently been looking at ways of making a hand painted look to some signs on a tow truck so this is interesting to me. It seems to be almost impossible to get the individuality of hand lettering using a computer, on the sign above for instance, the two 'O' letters are completely different in shape and stroke width, probably due to the size and the fact the sign painter could not stand back and look at them while painting! On my Mack truck, I drew the lettering by hand on A4 paper then scanned it but my home printing of the decals let it down. Anyone got other methods?
Have somebody else print the decals. -- Russ
Voyager, What scale truck? What does the lettering say? Any "artwork" or just letters?
What was unacceptable with your homeprinted decals, the print quality or how your hand drawn letters looked when printed?
If you have a program called CorelDRAW, then any shape is possible to create, no mater what shape the letter is, you can copy it exactly. You can change the scale up or down until it's exactly correct, as per whatever you're trying to copy.
CorelDRAW even has a tracing program built-in, sometime it works, some times it doesn't, all depends on what it is your attempting to trace.
Couple this to an ALPS die-sublimation printer and ANY transfer is now possible, the transfers made by the ALPS printer looks about the same as a silk screen printed decal.
Do a 'google' and just see what can be done/achieved with the CorelDRAW program and an ALPS printer.
Thanks, Greenie. You're right, Corel Draw can do everything and probably more that Inkscape can do. Corel is an excellent program. I mentioned Inkscape (and previously GIMP) because both are free, open source, work on PC and Mac, and are accessible to modelers like me with a very limited modeling budget.
I'm still learning what GIMP can do. For me it seems very similar to Photoshop, although you will read widely varying opinions on that. That is not the point, however. If you have Corel and Photoshop, you can do everything shown here, they are the tool, not the technique. Inkscape has been on my computer for some time, but I've just started using it and finding what it can do. Right now I'm still stumbling along and some of the methods I've come up with at present are awkward and more complicated than need be, this is a technique in progress.
Both GIMP and Inkscape also have a tracing feature, which also sort of works. A lot depends on the contrast and resolution of the image being traced. In the color photo of F.B. Peck Coal Co. above, none of the tracing tools would give a usable copy of the letters.
Beyond copying and tracing, one basic idea behind "Letterbashing' is that you can also create original signs that look hand lettered instead of computer generated. The 'LETTERBASHING' sign on the brickwall above is a simple example. The computer font letters were individually tweaked in a way that a sign painter might do it to to fit the space they are in. That example was done with GIMP for a workshop I presented. Small differences were introduced to most of the letters so that no two are exactly identical. An understanding of handlettering's capabilities compared to typography is fundamental and that is the very core of the "Letterbashing" approach. Voyager noticed that the two "O"s in the Peck Coal sign were different and postulated that the sign painter probably couldn't back up far enough to see his work. That's very possible. Deliberate asthetic adjustments combined with accidental variations are what gives hand lettering its distinctive look.
What I am finding with Inkscape is that subtle or major differences between letters like that example can be achieved with more control than using GIMP. The oval with ' "The D&H" Lakawanna Anthracite' is an example. That was done by vectorizing one of the orange and black circular signs, tweaking and reshaping it. That was much easier than constructing it letter by letter as I would have done with GIMP. And as mentioned, once that lettering had been created, the whole sign could readily be adjusted for size without compromising the resolution of the letters - so for example, Voyager could create the lettering for his truck and then resize it for the wall of the shop where the truck comes from. That's an unlikely case, but you get the idea. With GIMP the range an image can be resized is more limited.
Depending on the scale personal small muscle control and other factors, modelers may not be able to actually handletter a convincing sign. This is a developing technique that I hope can help address that. All suggestions and comments are welcome.
Greenie, What do you do for signs? The NEB&W has an ALPS printer, but no driver. In the past they printed some excellent entire brick wall decals that included both actual signs and added signs.
Without hijacking this too much ;D this is the Mack in 1/25th. The trailer lettering was hand painted in one shot onto clear decal paper then applied. With weathering, I think it looks "ok" but the door and hood lettering was too small for me to paint so as I say, they were hand drawn onto A4 paper and scanned into Word and printed onto white decal paper on my inkjet printer. Of course the red "fill" was drawn in so the shading is different to the paint plus there is a white edge where the paper is cut I had to touch up. So Russ' first comment of getting them printed on an Alps is probably the best solution!
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The new project is the Emhar Bedford tow truck.
Voyager, Not hijacking at all. Thanks for joining in. Nice lettering, nice truck.
I saw your photos of the lettering and logo on the cab and your hand drawn design master for the door. They look pretty good to me. How much larger is your drawing than the decal?
Besides printing on an ALPS, another option that can work with your ink jet printer is to paint a white circle on the door that is a hair smaller than the outside red ring around the design. Print you design on clear decal paper and apply over the white circle. That will hide the white edge.
If you are not happy with the way the lettering itself looks, you can use your design as a template and revise it using GIMP and/or Inkscape (or whatever similar programs you might have).
The scroll and the circle are fairly elaborate designs on the cab. The signpainter who would have done them would have been a skilled craftsman. That can be an advantage because any differences in the individual letters would be the result of deliberate adjustments rather than accidental mistakes. Good type faces with small alterations can work well there.
One source I like for identifying type styles is Identifont: http://www.identifont.com/ It can help you find type styles similar to the lettering you want as a starting point for fiddling with them to look closer.
You can find many free fonts online, some very fancy that would pass as truck lettering - CAUTION: several graphic artists have warned that many online free fonts come with malware. I have not downloaded any fonts, so cannot substantiate or disprove that warning, but pass it along as a cautionary note.
You can probably find or adapt fonts already on your computer to look very close to your design. A complete explanation of how to do that is a bit much for posting here at this time, but if you are interested, email me. I can give you more information. to get started. a lot of it is
Thanks Bill. The door logo was on A4 so around 8" across but reduced to around 3/4" on the decal. Obviously this hides some of the descrepancies in my artwork but still gives a "one off" feel, although I did use the same design on both doors as you can't see both at once to compare! The scroll on the hood is handed so they were done individually. The idea of painting a white background for the decal is a good one, thanks for that.
On Saturday, May 30th I'll be doing a workshop on Letterbashing at the New England/Northeast Railroad Prototype Modelers Meet in Collinsville, Connecticut http://www.neprototypemeet.com/Welcome.html
There'll be some background on signpainting, comparisons of type vs handpainting, and an introduction to using GIMP and Inkscape for making model signs for all scales and time periods.
I'm not a signpainter, but here are some 1:1 signs I did at a history museum:
Cool.
Nice work. What museum is this?
Nice signs Bill and yes where is this?
Thanks, Marc, Ray & SandiaPaul, it's Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT.
Here's the lettering project that was the biggest challenge there, and in a way it started the whole concept of "Letterbashing". I had to paint the name on the transom while standing on a scaffold on a raft as both the raft and the Morgan danced to their own tunes.
An initial paper pattern for the name was made with, for that time, 'cutting edge' technology using a Gerber Scientific Signmaker plotter. Using old photos of the Morgan, I modified the plotted letters to be as close to what was in the photos as I could. I'm not a skilled letterer or signpainter, so to have drawn the pattern from scratch would have taken more time than allowed to finish the job. I didn't think about it again until several years later after noticing some model signs just lacked a certain handlettered look that, at least to me, made them more interesting to look at.
For someone who's not a sign painter (or is a sign painter) your work is great! Allan