https://thehustle.co/where-do-fonts-come-from/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

Custom proprietary fonts which are not available for purchase are quite common. Most major newspapers and magazines have one which is unique and associated specifically with the publication. Keith Morris designed a font which can only be used by the Campbell's Soup company. In these cases, the font is owned by the client, rather than by its designer.

Yes, go ahead and use it commercially.

Paul Lloyd made more than 100 fonts before 2008 which are 100% free for all use. His fonts from 2008 and later for the Greater Albion foundry are not free.

Which font editing software do you use to make fonts?

Do you draw your glyphs in the font editor, or import them from a different app?

Do you understand the terms ascender, descender and vertical metrics?

The problem is with the image quality. It appears that you have enlarged a smaller text sample. The altered image is insufficiently clear to allow for proper identification. Try your request again with the original image, even if it's small.

@Chuck Rang: Mention on the title page that the font on the cover is Logger by David Rakowski.

It's very possible that he did not design the font, he may have just made a digital version of a Public Domain alphabet design, from a printed source.

Usually the demo version has only a basic character map; (alphabet, possibly numbers, some limited punctuation). The full version would be for sale somewhere. It would likely include many accented characters, and other glyphs that are non-essential for basic text use.

Years ago, some font authors released demo versions with a few random glyphs not included, (no lower case k, no capital P, no number 4, etc.), but new fonts like that would not be posted on dafont today; a full alphabet in the character map is necessary for non-dingbat fonts.

I think something by Max Infeld, (Xenographer Fonts - https://www.dafont.com/max-infeld.d3584) would suit your purposes.

All of the SDFonts on dafont were posted before 2006, and the last updates were in February, 2007. There's no current associated dafont member account. Leaving a comment that you used the font for your film, (and a brief acknowledgement in the end credits), would appear to be sufficent. There's a tiny chance that you might have to cough up $5, somewhere down the road.

@Spudthumper88: If you're asking a question like this, you should include the name of the font applicable to your inquiry.

Some fonts listed as 100% free are in that category because the author chose that license when they uploaded their own work.

Some fonts listed as 100% free are in that category because information to that effect is contained in the header section of the font file. In older Windows operating systems, I think up to XP, the header could be read if the font was open in preview.

Some fonts are listed as 100% free because all work by that specific author is freeware.

Some fonts are 100% free because it says so in a read me document enclosed in the download .zip.

Some fonts are 100% free, but not listed with that license, because the font was uploaded by someone other than the author.

Some fonts are 100% free because it's been determined that the author is deceased.

Some fonts are 100% free because someone else asked previously, and dafont staff remember the author's reply. I don't know if Dieter Steffmann is still alive, but the procedure to obtain permission to use HIS fonts was just to ask politely on him home page. He said yes to everyone who did that.

Keep in mind that there are fonts on dafont which were made more than 30 years ago. In many cases, the person who made them no longer has any interest in typography, and the contact information, if it even exists, may be many years out of date.

Some of the 'old masters' of freeware fonts worked in typesetting during their employment career, then they made digital versions of their work after they retired. They just wanted their work to continue to be used after the age of lead block text.

Twenty years ago, a lot more fonts were 100% free, as a gift to the design community for freeware fonts made by other people. The commercialization of quickly made amateurish fonts is a relatively recent phenomena. Some kids think they'll pay for their college education with a few fonts they made on rainly afternoons. They look at download statistics, and see each as a potential sale. In reality, a whole lot of people collect fonts because they're free, as a form of hoarding. In many cases, the font itself will never be extracted from the .zip file. I have Gigabytes of unextracted font .zips, and I can't be the only one.

Some people download the same font multiple times, because they don't remember that they already have it. Some of the authors download their own fonts multiple times, to be placed higher on the popularity list.

Most of the people who download free fonts would decline, if the download cost a dollar. Quality of work matters, if the goal is to make money. Quantity of downloads just means that many people believe that the font is more valuable than the disk space it will occupy.

If you want to cover your butt legally, post a comment on the font description page, stating that you are using the author's font for an independent film, and that you are willing to pay fair compensation. Most likely, you'll never get an answer, but you can settle the matter if you do.

Ari94, I might be the only person who still uses ScanFont 3 to make fonts, but it's the only one compatible with my style.

I make detailed source graphics with MS Paint, and import them into ScanFont 3 as monochrome bitmaps. I then 'sculpt' the vectors by removing all of the nodes than are not needed to maintain the shape of the contours. If I remove the wrong node, edit -> undo puts it back.

Take a look at the animated .gif on the details page for my font Cabbagetown, to see the steps used to design my letter M. The read me .pdf in the dafont .zip has examples of what finished glyphs look like in ScanFont 3. The promo .gif is definitely worth the minute and twenty seconds of your life needed to watch it all the way to the end.

Note that SF3 is 1990's software, and no longer sold by fontlab. I don't think it works with Windows operating systems more recent than XP. I have it installed on an XP computer which has never been connected to the Internet. The processing speed is amazing; Internet and updates slow everything down.

I normally make dingbats, but Cabbagetown is my one and only original alphabet design.

Scroll through Manfred Klein's fonts: https://www.dafont.com/manfred-klein.d302?page=1

and keep in mind that many of his fonts have multiple styles, so a white on black version won't necessarily be displayed in the banners. He made several that fit your description request.

I'm pretty sure that Manfred is now deceased. If he's alive, he would be about 93. His last released fonts were made in 2008. I was told by Petra Heidorn, ("CybaPee"), that Manfred retired from Internet contact to care for his wife, who was seriously ill fifteen years ago.

I received an e-mail from him around then, and he attached a few fonts that were works in progress, near completion, but never released publicly. At one time, he used to release 20+ new fonts every Sunday.

It looks like Sunset Boulevard, with the shadows reversed. I only have samples of these four letters.

Thanks!

@GabiSalinas:

I know what you're doing wrong.

First you need to click on the banner for a font you want to see in text display. On that font's description page, type your text in the field below 'Custom Preview', select the size, then click on the Submit button.




Or if you were referring to the Preview and Submit buttons below the Reply window in a Forum thread:

Type some text in the Reply window, then click on Preview. You'll see what the text will look like in the forum post.

The dafont message board doesn't have a toolbar, so if you want to add color, formatting, change the text size, or add an image to your post*, you have to manually type the html tags.

*The procedure to add an image is different in the Font Identification forum.

Use this as a guideline:


Type this:




and this is what it looks like in the Reply window:


This text is bold.

This text is italic.

♦This text has diamond bullets surrounding it.♦

This text is blue.

This text is 20 point size.

This text is bold, italic, red, and 36 point size.

Inserting an image:

Type [img] then paste the address of the image, then type [/img]

Example:



posts the picture of Betty Boop with red hair.

To create a link to a web page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

creates a link to the wikipedia home page.

@johnrafael: Get in touch with toto@k22, who makes fonts and is also one of the dafont forum moderators. He has extensive knowledge of fonts created from foundry catalogues, and if you let him know which alphabet designs you plan to digitize, he can likely let you know if someone else has already done the job. Nothing would prevent you from making one of your own, but to me, that would be a waste of time, if the existing one was well made.

If an alphebet design currently exists only on printed paper, creating a digital version is not copyright infringement. You can also make a font of your own from scans of an existing font. What you CAN'T do legally is to modify someone else' font files to create a knock-off which is largely the work of someone else.

Read the Fair Use provision of copyright law on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use. I use that extensively in most of my own fonts, which is part of the reason why all but one of mine are 100% free for all use.

An important provision of Fair Use is that you cannot legally earn money from appropriation of other people's intellectual property. If you made a T-shirt with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it that you drew yourself, you're not breaking any laws if you wear it. If you try to sell copies, however, copyright law would apply.

If you make a font under the fair use provision, and someone else uses it commercially, they might be infringing on copyright, but you are not liable. If I create bullets and give them away, I have no liability is someone else puts those bullets in a gun then shoots someone.

@The Mouse Avenger: The text in that poster is custom lettering, as opposed to a font, ie: Someone drew the letters as part of the picture. The R and A in Great are connected, but not all of the capitals have connections. The curved angle would be different if there were more or fewer than two letters in between.

@familydog

It's unlikely that anyone will make a custom font for you at any price. For one thing, very few type designers read the General Discussion forum on dafont.

I suggest you look for an existing font similar to what you want. Your best place to look would be the Hebrew Simulation fonts on Luc Devroye's site:

http://luc.devroye.org/h-sim.html

Don't expect all of the links to be working, but you might find a free one that you'd never locate through Google.

Make better fonts. I looked at your dafont portfolio, and none of your fonts scream at me 'I must have this one'.

There are more people making submissions who don't know how to make fonts properly, and people modifying someone else' font, and trying to pass it off as their own work.

Some younger designers are making fonts with dollar signs in front of their eyes. They think they'll pay for their college education with something they knock out on a rainy afternoon, as if every dafont download was a sale.

This looks hand drawn to me. The M+A in MAGGIE is connected at the bottom, but there is a small space between those letters in MACNEAL.

.ttf font files didn't exist yet when she last had a hit song on any country's chart.