Typophile

(x) hand written script on Neil Young albums - custom font {Stephen}

rahlgren

Does anyone know if the font that Neil Young uses for all the text on his albums is available anywhere? It's copied from his handwriting, and it definitely exists, as you can see inside an album or CD. This sample is actually hand-written, I'm pretty sure.

Thanks!

Hi Rick,

This sample is actually hand-written, I’m pretty sure

yes, I second that: same letters are not identical. Why should it be a font then?
F

[edit:] Sorry, now I see what you mean: some letters actually are identical.

If you were to look at the inside of a CD insert, where the song titles and other small text is, all the characters of the alphabet are the same, so it has been digitized for some time. Would it help to post a sample of that?

Actually, some of the letters do appear to be the same. The E's are the same, and so is the N in Young and Wind.

...

One would have to assume that if that is indeed Neil's own handwriting, it was digitized for internal use.

Yeah, I second what aluminum says.

It was done for a George Harrison album as well.

Now if Matthew Carter were to make an album, there would be tons of great type to do the liner notes :-)

ChrisL

I know that the liner notes on "Harvest" were actually hand-written, but these days it's probably easier to just do it with a custom font.

- Lex

I should get out more often...

If I open the PDF page of the PW booklet in Illustrator, I can delete the background, and build an alphabet of outline letters -- with alternate characters -- then build words to my heart's content.

You get some font substitution notices, but they open up as outlines just fine.

< insert slippery slope notice here >

Yeah. I wouldn't suggest Rahlgren's method to anyone. You might find yourself using something which could get you into trouble. Accessing typefaces out of Illustrator as outlines isn't a legitimate way to use anyone else's work.

Neil's handwriting was made into a font with alternate characters and was floating around on the web a few years ago. I bet it can still be found.

Now I'm remembering that there was a separate application that randomized the letterforms.

You have a point there. Maybe I'll stick with Helvetica.

I worked for Warner Bros. back in the 90's and did many Young cd's. It is NOT handwritten. It is a font for mac. I had it until a hard drive crashed. Look at the enclosed pic, it is of a cd I made up of rough "live" Neil performances. I created the cd for fun and you'll see how the font looks. The cover with "headphones" was actually an EMI George Martin project that I worked on. Any can email me and keep in touch on the Neil font.

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