Sunday, November 20, 2005

Identify this font



Can you identify this font? My brother, an expert judge of this kind of thing, was unable to.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's the "And Time" from Marquarrie and Robinson's translation of Heidegger's "Being and Time".

But to say that isn't yet to identify the type of font that it is. I'm not especially knowledgable about font names, so I thought this might be a chance to learn more. Some sites permit you to simply browse their catalog of fonts. This is cool, but takes forever. The easier thing is to try a font search engine. www.fonts.com and www.linotype.com both permit you to search for a font by assenting to or dissenting from various stock descriptions of certain features of the font. Going this way, I was typically told that the font was Iona, which--upon seeing what Iona looks like--is clearly not the same font.

One site (http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/) allows you to upload an image of the font and attempts to identify it with the aid of a few questions. I used your image, but that didn't give me a close hit. So, I then scanned the whole cover and used "Being and Time". The closest match I got was Quadrivium NF. The main discrepancy is a difference in the capital "A". Check it out here http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/nicksfonts/quadrivium-nf/quadrivium-nf/

So I didn't quite find the answer. My guess is that it's in this family.

Anonymous said...

Here's more. www.nicksfonts.com tells us that that Quadrivium NF is based on Weiss Initials II, designed by Emil Rudolph Weiss. (They actually call him "Eric" but other sites seem to agree that it's "Emil".)

Here's a set of Weiss's fonts. http://www.myfonts.com/browse/person/weiss/emil/rudolf/

The closest match here appears to be Wellsbrook Initials SG. However, the "E" is wrong.

Charles P. Everitt said...

Chauncey: grabs the mic like Fidel Castro. Scientifical madness! Your status is the baddest.