I’m working on a new site. My client recently purchased a bed & breakfast in Pennsylvania and hired me to re-do their website and some print work.
The inn was built in 1909. All of the signage uses the name of the place in a certain font. The logo could probably use some updating, but my client can’t afford to change everything right now so I need to work with what’s there. There is no electronic version of the logo, and no way to get one. It looks like the prior owners copied the original logo by hand for the literature and website. Gives a certain character, but I wanted to get a cleaner, less-drawn version.
So, job #1 for me is to get the logo into a digital vector format. I will need to use it in a variety of sizes, colors, etc. and the rough & grainy 170 x 118 black on white version on the current website won’t work for much.
I knew the font looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. [WhattheFont](http://www.whatthefont.com) and [Identifont](http://www.identifont.com) didn’t help. So I [posted](http://www.myfonts.com/FontForums/read.php?f=5&i=48735&t=48735) on the [MyFonts.com](http://www.myfonts.com) forums. Took 30 minutes to find out the font was Bookman Bold Italic Swash.
Now here’s the interesting part. This font doesn’t exist for the computer! [ITC](http://www.itc.com) digitized Bookman but the italic version is not the same (biggest difference in the lower case “a” not to mention the lack of swash alternatives).
I was sorry that I didn’t save my old *Letraset Type Specimen Book* from college because I know that’s where the above image came from. I can’t list the number of typography websites I searched through…too many.
It was beginning to look like I would have no choice but to trace out the logo in Illustrator. I trace logos for projects all the time, but fonts are challenging. Unless it’s handwriting or some other hand-drawn effect typeface, you have to measure everything carefully or it just looks “off.” But alas, this morning a gift arrived in my inbox. Some kind soul read my request on the MyFonts site and took the time to make it a font! I’m not going to name names, but you know who you are and if you’re reading this, **thank you, again!** Still have to tweak it a bit, but definitely a huge step in the right direction.
So now I have to figure out how to handle the licensing. This logo was designed in 1909 and it served them well, so I don’t have a problem with using the font specifically for this purpose. But it would be nice to own a license so I could use it (sparingly, very sparingly) in other ways for this project.
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