Typophile

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typography.

Hi All,

I working on a project which requires me to recreate the 'with compliments' text and address seen in the top sample. The font used here is Akzidenz Grotesk Extended. I don't currently have this font and the company were not willing to pay the just under £350 for the two weights required for this small job so I am trying to create something similar using fonts I already have.

As seen in the image below, the second sample from the top is using Helvetica Neue, which I have manually extended to make it look similar. There are a few subtle differences though, such as the numbers and the letter R.

I then tried using ITC Blair, as seen in the third sample. This is all with the medium weight, however I may purchase the light weight if I decide to go ahead with this option. This is also different, but in some ways is more similar than the Helvetica Neue sample.

Which do you think looks most similar to the original image, and do you have any suggestions?

Thanks for your help!

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Hrant H Papazian

1) There's a lot of room between £350 and free. There are many good fonts you don't already own that might be close enough to AG.

2) Don't stretch fonts by more than tiny fractions, especially monoline ones.

hhp

typography.

Thanks for your response. I know what you mean, I looked at others such as Trade Gothic and Helvetica Extended but these didn't seem any more similar than the ones I was already using. Do you have any ideas of any similar fonts?

Also, thanks for the advice about stretching fonts, I'll bear that in mind in future.

Thanks!

Hrant H Papazian

I put "Akzidenz Grotesk alternatives" in Google and saw some promising stuff.

hhp

Jeffrey

these might be close:

http://www.ascenderfonts.com/font/news-gothic-extended-bold.aspx

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/castletype/standard/

Hrant H Papazian

This just in:
http://carvalho-bernau.com/neutral/
https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/neutral
(For the record: I don't buy its "neutral" claim.)

hhp

Albert-Jan Pool

At ATypI Amsterdam, Sofie Beier presented her Neutral typeface design. She designed it for legibility research projects that investigated the effect of styles such as light — bold, regular — italic and condensed — extended on legibility. For Sofie Beier, Neutral is something in between Neo-Grotesque / Modern Sans (Univers, Helvetica, Unica, Folio and Akzidenz Grotesk except for the ‘e’ ;–) and Humanist Sans (Gill, Frutiger, Syntax, Verdana). This resulted in a typeface that looks like Trade Gothic, News Gothic, Franklin Gothic, Arial, Venus, Scheltersche Grotesk etc. Quite something else than what Modernists like to think of as something neutral. My point is that I think that, when it comes to legibility, Sofie Beier has a better clue of that what is neutral than the advocators of the Modern Sans. On the other hand: “Mediocrity is always the correct weight, except its scales are not true”, Anselm Feuerbach, 1829–1880, German philosopher.

Hrant H Papazian

I didn't know! Samples?

hhp

Donald H. Tucker

You could try using Identifont for "Akzidenz-Grotesk Extended"
http://www.identifont.com/find?font=Akzidenz-Grotesk+Extended&q=Go Identifont suggests many alternatives and includes images of their letters and numbers.
Don

Pablo Impallari

Eduardo Tunni also did a similar research a few years ago, that he keep private for a long time. They are now published as Average: https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Average and Average Sans: https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Average+Sans

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