Ice'n Gothic Bold

Gallery
1

I was hoping I could get a professional analysis of this font.

http://www.extraxa.com/webposts/ICE044.TTF

I can’t take credit for it, in fact, it’s a little bit sketchy because I plan on using this in a software program I’m releasing, but this is like the phantom font, it comes with a name of “Ice’n Gothic Bold” and that’s it! No copyright info, no nothing. Actually, I’ve probably got 5,000 fonts on my machine from downloads and those $10 dollar CDs, and I’d say maybe half of them are the same in that there’s no telling where they came from.

Anyways, for me, about 98% of the time, it’s all about cleanliness and legibility at small sizes and in my opinion there are Tahoma and Verdana, and then everybody else. (Admittedly, the fonts I’m comparing them to are, as mentioned before, from somewhat dubious sources, I’m sure Adobe has stuff that could match, if only I could afford it.)

But this one, I was amazed, I’ve skimmed through all 5,000 of my fonts on more than a few occasions and this is one of the very few that to me is in the same league as Tahoma and Verdana. So I was completely shocked when I saw how many errors the error report dug up on this font. We’re talking multiple redundant points on just about every single glyph. Here’s an example:

In the part that’s circled, how many points and curves would a professional fontographer be able to narrow that mess down to?

And how on earth did it get so crowded? Is this definately something someone scanned in, because I can’t imagine a person plotting that many points and curves.

Alright then, sorry for the novel-length post here, but I really am just getting into this world of fonts, I had no idea there was so much to it, I had no real comprehension of what a great form of art it is, so I was hoping I could just get some opinions of this, my new favorite font. (Especially after I clean it up!)

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With regard to your font:-

Open ICE044.TTF in FCP
Goto Format → Settings → General tab
Here you will see that the font vendor is ATEC
The link to see Microsoft registered font vendors is:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/vendorlist.aspx
This link gives a list of font vendors and urls to take you to their websites, or it gives e-mail addresses or other contact information.
Look down the list for ATEC and here you will find an information link. If you visit their site, you will see that it is a company which sells font conversion software.
It looks, then, that the font is a converted or reworked font, the name of which I know not, and the original would not have had so many extraneous points. I’m just guessing at this and I would be pleased to be corrected.

Joe.

3

In reference to finding out about the Ice-N-Gothic font:

To read contents of a ttf file.

Find it on your Windows Explorer then hold down SHIFT as you press the right-mouse button.

Open with Wordpad then use the Search feature for things like copyright or by…

When you modify an existing font, the name of the font itself remains the same within this text, so you can locate the name before trying to install it onto your PC using the Font Creator Program care of http://www.high-logic.com

I checked various Internet sites:

http://www.fontparadise.com which allows you to download their EASY FONT INSTALLER, then you can install fonts located on their website…

http://www.1001fonts.com

They recommend http://www.fonts.com and http://www.ITCfonts.com

(see right screen for links)

Partner Sites

FontFinder.ws
1001 Winamp Skins
1001 ICQ Skins

Printer Supplies

Ink4art.com
4inkjets.com
Inkjets.com
Mrinkman.com 123Inkjets.com

Pay Fonts

FontFinder.ws
MyFonts.com
Fonts.com
ITCFonts.com

Free Fonts

FontFinder.ws
TopFreeFonts.com
AbstractFonts.com
Best100Free.com
HighFonts.com

Font Designers

pizzadude.dk
larabiefonts.com



http://www.searchfreefonts.com was useful as I’ve downloaded dozens of fancy fonts from there.

http://www.google.com no results…

http://www.vivisimo.com no results…

http://www.altavista.com no results…


Thanks to your original post I learnt about the VALIDATION or error fixing feature that the Font Creator Program allows. See Font Menu itself then Validation…

The Ice-N-Gothic font has several errors which can be fixed or partially fixed. Then appears a list of the unfixed. These have co-ordinates to show the errors which may be repaired manually.

When you OPEN an installed font, you can then save it in a separate folder with a new filename eg tahomatest to create tahomatest.ttf

You then validate the font for any errors and then get the results saying some errors were fixed and here are the rest…

Sometimes it helps to compare the before and after, however, with Tahoma having over 1,000 symbols or glyphs it would probably be better just to test the main alphabet and numbers and punctuation…

On testing the BlackChancery font, I found that the numbers weren’t the full size or height level. I have therefore created a modified version of this font and am testing various features using the 30-day evaluation. It has even more features than I could have hoped for. Thankfully by changing the font name within the ttf text I could install a modified version with a new name being recognised. It’s best to leave the original font file as it is… Since you may have a few font tests to do you may wish to use AAATahoma to locate the font tests quickly… The Font Creator program has its own TEST FONT screen and that helps but I use Word Processors as well and some of these allow for fancy background images to be used. Ability Office does this and so I found it useful to use a goldparchment background. Using Paint Shop Pro I clicked on Colours Menu then NEGATIVE to get a dark blue parchment image instead. Now the font could be changed to white and shown on top of this new dark blue image background.

I’m setting up a calligraphy/ typography style website demo later. I use poetry for my websites and will be adding some poems on this theme, too.

Rather than use embedded fonts I use images using the cropped images created by the PRINTSCREEN key copying what’s on screen to the temporary clipboard.

4

Thanks for the replies.

It looks, then, that the font is a converted or reworked font, the name of which I know not, and the original would not have had so many extraneous points. I’m just guessing at this and I would be pleased to be corrected.

I would say you’re probably right on the mark. I had installed the bold version, but I remembered I also had a normal version somewhere in the collection, so I dug it up . . .

The normal version, to my novice eyes, looks much more like an original, although, it also has the ATEC font vendor ID, so perhaps it also is a converted font, with the bold being two generations removed and thus far more heavy on the extraneous point side.

Here’s how that same character looks with the normal version:

Intreseting note on ATEC, the Microsoft has vendor info listed as last updated August 1, 2000 and it lists http://www.convertafont.com as the link. Go to the site and it’s "the future site of . . . " Wow, three and a half years in the making, I can’t wait to see it when it’s done.

And thank you Denis for all the links, as long as you’re at it, you might as well post links to your poetry websites as it sounds as if fonts are an integral part of it all.

Anyone care to say how many points (both on and off curve) they would see themselves using to reach effectively the exact same shape in the circled area on the first pic?

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Mike,

See my thread on creating smooth curves.

6

Looking at ATEP site’s freely available font, Memo.ttf, it had 399 defined glyphs, same as your Ice’n-Gothic Bold of which only 222 had characters drawn. Running FCP validate corrected 218 glyphs leaving 21 which needed further manual intervention. Those characteristics seem very much the same genealogy as Ice’n-Gothic Bold.

The Memo.ttf font had drawn and named all 222 characters properly, as compared to Ice’n-Gothic Bold which lost contact 'twixt names and curves around glyph 97. Somebody musta gotten tired making designs at that point.

I had FCP trouble with Ice’n-Gothic Bold until I performed Auto Naming which cleaned it up enough to be able to display.

Since the naming and glyphs were so messed, I would not recommend doing anything with it as you plan. I lose interest in fonts if they aren’t closer to perfect that this one! Especially since you have so many choices.

7

As previously mentioned, I’ve been working on a website promoting calligraphy and fonts.

I refer to the Font Creator program and mt partially modified version of the Black Chancery font.

Several poems are included to serve as demos of well-known fonts and if visitors install the new font then they will see what happens if you try…

http://calligraphy.shows.it

8

Hmmm My version of Black Chancery by Cambridge Fontworks had EHIWY which were very much shorter than the remainder of the upper case. The tops were all aligned for numbers and upper case, they just stopped before reaching the base… It’s a rather nice design in all.

With only 114 glyphs drawn it doesn’t have any diacritic-loaded chars (or @ or euro). After glyph 104 names and drawings go different paths.

Font Creator directly shows you the naming and vendor information (Format/Naming) so you don’t have to exit to another program. It can be changed here.

I tend to change the internal font name so it can coexist with the “real” font when installed. I always save the modified ttf file under a different name cause you never know when you many need to go back to “The Source”. As a result you double the number of fonts you have for every one you change.

FCP can install fonts. Gee sucha product!

I tried your web site a couple of times and couldn’t get through – will try later.

Dick Pape