It's Mason Serif Alt Regular.

Aehem, Sure, John is right, the sample you posted is 'Mason', from Emigre..
http://www.emigre.com/EF.php?fid=104

( My thoughts were temporary drawn away, because of the 'Morpheus' statement.. )

Thanks guys, but even though the font is VERY similar, it was not the exact font used in that image.

Original:


Mason Serif Alternate:


I think the original had better typography than the Mason Serif Alternate, especially the way it did the F's, E's and the N's ... oh well, I might settle for the Mason if all else fails, although I would REALLY would love to know what the font used in the original image was...

The font is Parish Light.

This page from the website in English explains where these fonts come from, but the downloads from the links are Mac only.

I assume that this font "borrows" greatly from Mason, but its copyright date shows 1994 and the Emigre site lists a general font copyright date range of 1995 to 2004. Hmmm ...

Mike, I love you!

That's exactly the font I was looking for! The first link you provided has a PC version (shareware download!) and it works flawlessly.



The readme implies it was inspired by the Charlemagne font, which makes me wonder which really came first, Mason or Parish ... considering that the Parish is more elegant and less rough around the edges, it makes me think too, hehe ...

Well, thanks very much for the help guys! You prevented me from spending $40 on some font that wasn't really what I was looking for. Cheers!

Parish is more elegant? Hum... I don't think so

Emigre's site states that Mason was designed in 1992, making Parish Light a cheap knockoff with a couple of variations. "Borrows," my finial, as Hrant might say -- it's an outright theft.

A little side quiz: Mason wasn't always the name of this family. Who knows what Barnbrook called it originally?

Any doubt can be erased by perusing more of A4's offerings, which are similar copies of others' work.

Thanks for the date clarification, Chesh. My intent was to simply ID the actual font used. Parish is very hard to find and I doubt very much that this will change after a Typophile post.

I must confess that I like Parish more than Mason, although elegant isn't a word I'd use for either typeface.

Well, I guess it's a matter of aesthetics then, hehe I still find that Parish looks better than Mason Serif Alternative, especially the little nuances like the serifs in most letters, like the F's and E's, and the consistency of M and N, as well as O and Q, etc... oh well




btw, that's some nice trivia on the "Mason" font... I guess fonts aren't spared from these types of "socio-political" changes, hehe

Something tells me Parish was more than inspired by Charlemagne...



Just a hunch, but I think Parish is a Masonized Charlemagne.

Lazy dog, indeed...

Wow, impressive, Mike.

I gotta admit though, Parish still looks better after all the bastardization, lol

How can anybody design (?) a face like Parish and look to the type community face to face? It's an intellectual property theft. This has nothing to do with "elegance".

Mark got the point. It was at the tip of my tongue as I read this thread one day later it was posted.

Sorry, Yves. As always, you're quicker...

jmc _=+

This attack on Tolitz is totally out of line. She sought a font and, finding it, stated that she likes it better than Mason. She and I both got an education as to how Parish was made (i.e., thieving glyphs from two preexisting fonts). NOWHERE did she indicate approval of this process.

If you want to attack somebody, please leave poor Tolitz out of it and try me instead.

It's clear to me now that Parish should never have been made. Apparently, the guy even had the gall to ask for a shareware fee. Nevertheless, I STILL like Parish better than Mason Serif Alternate and neither Tolitz nor I should be condemned for this subjective opinion.

This font is unknown to pretty much everybody (try finding it anywhere else via Google search) and, again, this thread ain't likely to change that, so please ... chill out guys.

Tolitz

Sorry Tolitz, sorry Mike. Maybe the subtleties of the mother tongue are not easy to translate. I was not attacking. This is not my personal style. Even if I don't agree with some practices I always keep away the person who make them. I want a world full of freedom. And, OF COURSE, I was talking about the copy and paste way of "design" not about the free personal opinion of Tolitz Rosel or Mike Freiman or... me.

Uhm, I don't get it either ... I was looking for a font, wanted to know its name, and Mike helped me out. I don't see why I'm suddenly the font world's number one enemy (pardon if I "LOL" at that).

I was being honest. It DOES look better - to me. Now, if I said "congrats for creating a wonderful ripoff font, more power to you, I'll download more of your work!" then I will understand the rabid flaming. But I didn't ... I said it looks pretty good - to me. I'm not lying. It does. Does that mean I support font stealing? Now where did you get "that" idea?

I was looking for that font because I saw it used on a game manual (Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo 1 manual, to be exact, go sue flame them too, if you want, they even printed the damn thing using that font and exocet, haha). Well, anyway, I liked it, so I hunted for it. Mike helped out, and I'm very thankful. I also appreciate the trivia and comments by everyone here. But remember that I am not the enemy here. It's those terrorists! errr, font thiefs!

Anyway, cheers people. I had a jolly laugh, even if I was grossly misunderstood. Thanks again Mike.

Tolitz: sorry again. I am sure you are not "the font world's number one enemy". I was talking about the font, not about you. I think I didn't misunderstood you. It was a simple commentary about the font. Nothing else.

By the way, I don't know what "LOL" means.

That's okay, I wasn't really furious ... just mildly surprised and somewhat disappointed ;) Honestly, I didn't see it coming...

Anyway, here's a screenshot of the Diablo Manual's table of contents. Blizzard Entertainment is one of the biggest game companies in the US, so I thought their nice-looking font was authentic, y'see...

http://www.bigredx.net/images/diablomanual.jpg

oops, my server is down

The font they used at the top is Exocet, by Jonathan Barnbrook, the same guy who did Mason.

Designers will do what designers will do. The people who hang out here identifying typefaces, who know type and care about type more than just about anybody in the world (which is why we are so good at identifying typefaces), when we see something like Parish, it's impossible for us to let it go by without comment. It just goes with the territory here.

This brings up a curious question for me. Let's assume for one moment that the glyphs are not just hacked up copies of Charlemange (although, that makes me question Mason as well, as it bears a lot of similarities to Chalemange as well, doesn't it?). If I'm inspired by a font I see, and I design a font that uses those characteristics, how is that theft? The laws in the US do not protect type design. They protect the software that allows one to use the font. It's not theft, it's a protected act that the patent office and copyright offices in the US have zero problem with.

I view this the same way I view copycat films in Hollywood. It's lame as an artist to create by slavishly copying, but it's not unexpected or illegal.

(Yes, I know that not everyone here is from the US, and the copyright protection of font design is different outside of our little western nation.)

Yves, it was your very first sentence in that post that was offensive to
me. You made a jump from "some people" (who in the world should
Tolitz and I think that refererred to other than ourselves?) thinking the
typeface looked better

Well I'm grateful to you all for clearing up the Manson/Mason question. I have the font both ways and could never figure out what the difference was between the two or what to call it. I think I'll keep it as Manson just to be subversive ;-)

Your Manson may become a collector's item some day, eh Patricia?
Handle those glyphs gently ...

I'd like to see a bezier-by-bezier comparison of Ma(n)son, Parish, and Charlemagne to see exactly where the thefts occurred.

For the record, I didn't think Yves' message was a personal attack -- it was an attack on the attitude of laughing (that's what LOL means, Jose -- "laughing out loud") at the idea that after all the stealing, the end result was actually preferable, which connotes a kind of tacit acceptance of the theft.

That's kind of why I'd like to see the beziers -- it's one thing to steal an idea ("good artists borrow, great artists steal") and improve on it; it's quite another to simply steal another's work, customize it a little and then call it your own.

For example, Carol Twombly didn't come up with the ideas for Charlemagne (or Trajan, for that matter) out of thin air -- they're based on forms from history. She built on those ideas and created something both respectful of history and original at the same time.

If the Parish designer printed out the Charlemagne and Mason sets, then traced them, added the Mason-inspired accents to the Charlemagne forms by drawing them on the paper, then scanned it in and did every bezier from scratch, then I wouldn't really have a problem with it. But if the designer simply converted Charlemagne and Mason to outlines, then modified the beziers, I'd be much more upset about it.

Finally, if it is an outright theft, as it looks like it is, it doesn't matter how hard the font is to find. The legal argument about international copyright is immaterial to me; it's a breach of professional ethics, especially to turn around and charge for the theft.

I'm sorry, I didn't know that laughing out loud was construed as an insult to fontographers here (especially when I was laughing at the sheer irony of it all). I don't know - I don't have the mindset of some of you people so I cannot really empathize... maybe I would be touchy about the subject too if I were you, so I would give you the benefit of a doubt.

Oh Yves, you asked what I do for a living. I am a web developer and I am also into web consulting. I hope my job description helps your argument against me (oops, the font, I mean, you were attacking the font, right) substantially.

Anyway, my apologies for expressing my subjective opinion. It won't happen again All fonts stolen from original authors are horrid and look terrible, I get that now...

But thanks for the trivias!

Mark, Tolitz stated herself that the Diablo manual used Exocet. All the more reason to think that the accompanying font was legitimate.

Oops, I missed that, and I agree with you.

If a designer likes a font, they will use it, and don't usually pay much attention to the pedigree. I don't really have a problem with that or even derivative fonts like Parish, in and of themselves. I do have a problem when someone tries to pass off such a font as an original work.

I do think derivative fonts should be allowed to exist somehow in a way that's fair to the original designers. There is certainly a demand for them. The one avenue that is allowed now in some licenses is that, if you have a legal copy of a font, you can make a derivative version for your own use. The problem is when you try to distribute it, which puts the maker of such a font in a very dubious and possibly illegal position. In an ideal world, Carol Twombly and Jonathan Barnbrook would get a cut of the proceeds from something like Parish. Or maybe there should be a requirement that, for example, anyone using Parish should have a legal copy of Charlemagne or Mason. In fact, there's no reason why people couldn't do this on their own now.

It's a little sticky with Parish in particular, though. The basic font data seems to me to have come from Charlemagne. The designer then took ideas from Mason and applied them to Charlemagne. I think taking the basic font data from Charlemagne is very different taking visual ideas from Mason. The first is more to do with software copyright, the second is more about artistic integrity. Software can be protected legally. Ideas usually can't (except by patent). I wonder if

Sorry, I have one last little thing and then I'm done with the topic. The argument that the presence of Exocet seemed to imply legitimacy of the other font is spurious. It wouldn't surprise me, given the reality of the situation, if it turned out that the Exocet is not Exocet at all but is actually a similarly copied font.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I opened both Parish and Charlemagne in FontLab. The point data of some of the characters in Parish is identical to Charlemagne. In some cases, there are the same number of points, but some of them have been moved around. In yet other cases, the characters have been redrawn.

Sorry, the correct term for that argument would have been "specious," not "spurious." My bad.

on a separate note ...
Isn't that Cabarga Cursiva available for free download?
It's listed as Obtuse Highlight, Solid by
Keith Field.

http://www.a4.se/svensk/typsnitt/les_fonts_terribles.html

Hey, I think I just spotted one of the Slim Jim fonts on there from another ID request! I guess the question is, what ISN'T stolen on there?

Glad I got that right -- it was my reaction, too.

As I said, my LOL'ing was misunderstood as some sort of "subconscious" approval for theft (there was probably a precedent for it, because I honestly don't know what gave yves that idea) - but I won't hold that against ya guys ;)

Peace.

At least as I understood it, your LOL remark indicated that you thought it was funny (likely in the ironic rather than the ha-ha sense) that even after you knew the font was a bastardized version of two established typefaces, you still liked it better. You have every right to like it better -- I'm sure the designer did, too; it was his idea to "improve" upon Charlemagne and Mason in the first place. The problem (for me, anyway; not trying to speak for Yves but I did it so well before...) is that I don't think there's anything funny about how he apparently went about it, ironic, ha-ha, or otherwise.

Note: neither I nor Yves suggested that you approved of the practice, but if you end up using the font, you've basically accepted it as a convenience with reservations. Two very different things.

> "(that's what LOL means, Jose -- "laughing out loud")"

Thanks, Chesire.

jmc _=+

So stealing a design and changing it a bit so it looks
"better" to some people is okay these days? I'm not
LOLing so much, Tolitz.

The problem with these practices is that it devaluates
type design as an art form and a craft. People think
it's enough to nick some ideas from other designers here
and there, and play around with the "found" character
shapes to create a "new" design. So they think: "Is that all
there is to it? Oh, it can't be all that bad to pirate typefaces
then. Why pay these hacks for their work?"

Tell me, I'm interested: what do you do for a living?

BTW Mark is right: Parish is Mason-ized Charlemagne. So
they stole from both Carol Twombly AND Jonathan Barnbrook.
Tilting a serif here and there isn't going to fool us...

Mike I'd like to stress I did not attack Tolitz at any given
moment. I just gave my (strong) opinion about certain
practices in type "design". I have to agree that the last
sentence of my original post, intended as a first step to
a discussion, might've been interpreted wrong.

Furthermore we know from past experience this is a very
touchy subject around here, so accidents are bound to
happen. Sorry if I irked you or Tolitz, no offense.

I saw that one too BJ. I was half tempted to list all
the rip-offs, but I prefer to invest some time, love and
caring in an incredibly cute six-day old. If I may have
given the impression of bailing out in this discussion,
I sure hope you appreciate the reason why.

Oh and THX Chesh for correctly interpreting and clarifying
my LOL comment. That's exactly what I meant. You da man.

There is a recreated version of 'Morpheus' available, done by Scriptorium, named 'Orpheus'..
http://www.fontcraft.com/scriptorium/orpheus.html

( Link / hint courtesy of the Typophile news & events board, right here.. )