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Letterbashing

Started by Bill Gill, February 26, 2015, 01:35:18 PM

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Bill Gill

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.


Bill Gill

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.

Bill Gill

And a member found a small version of the lettering on the oval part of the logo on these porcelain signs.

Bill Gill

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'.

Bill Gill

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.

Bill Gill

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.

Chuck Doan

"They're most important to me. Most important. All the little details." -Joseph Cotten, Shadow of a Doubt





http://public.fotki.com/ChuckDoan/model_projects/

finescalerr

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

Hydrostat

I'll make it. If I have to fly the five feet like a birdie.
I'll fly it. I'll make it.

The comprehensive book about my work: "Vollendete Baukunst"

SandiaPaul

Very nice work, but we have discussed this before!

Paul
Paul

Bill Gill

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.

voyager

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?
Andrew

If it has wheels, I'll have a look!

finescalerr

Have somebody else print the decals. -- Russ

Bill Gill

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?

greenie

#14
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.