Typophile

Help! - trying to approximate Helvetica Neue Rounded Light

Mark Palm

Hello, I'm having a frustrating font problem that perhaps someone here could help with. I created some text in Photoshop using Helvetica Neue Ultralight. Then I added a faux bold to it which made it look very similar to Neue Light. However, for some reason the faux bold also added a rounded appearance to the text which I really like. You can see the text here: www.moderncharms.blogspot.com it's the "MODERN CHARMS" at the top of the page. Now I'm working on a print layout and I want the text to look like this, but I can't use text from photoshop because it is not a vector program so the text will not look sharp when printed. I can't even convert this text into shapes in photoshop because the program refuses to convert anything to shape that utilizes a faux bold. So i figured I would just purchase the font Helvetica Neue Rounded Light, but it turns out there is no such thing. So I'm trying to find a good alternative. I considered Arial Rounded Light, but the capital 'R' is quite different which I don't like and since it occurs twice in "MODERN CHARMS" I'm hoping not to have to use this font. If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations I would greatly appreciate them.

Mark

Hrant H Papazian

If all you need is "MODERN CHARMS" just render the text in Helvetica Neue Ultralight using Illustrator and modify the outlines (or scan, trace and clean up a rendering/printout of the bold/rounded version). If you want an actual font you would ideally open Helvetica Neue Ultralight in a font editor (like FontLab) and make a new font that's just how you like it. However I think Linotype's EULA forbids modification, at least not without permission. Personally I actually don't mind people violating such a "no-mod" clause, as long as they make sure the derivative font doesn't get distributed; and if does get distributed and they get caught, they need to pay for the consequences. So: taking personal risks, and accepting the associated responsibilities.

hhp

Mark Palm

Thanks for the advice. There is going to be a great deal of text in the project I'm working on so just modifying the outlines of "MODERN CHARMS' won't really solve the problem, but using a font editor to create an entire alphabet is a great idea. I will look into FontLab right away.

Hrant H Papazian

And if you find font editing to be too tedious or treacherous, that's what type designers are for. :-) There are quite a number of Typophile regulars who could do the job for you* including yours truly: hpapazian at gmail dot com.

* After getting permission from Linotype, since it would necessarily involve "distribution".

hhp

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