Did you look through daFont.com?
LINK

Yes, I just know we will need some punctuation and special charcters so I was trying to stay away from dafont so that we end up with something that has a full set of characters and is a little higher quality.

What exactly are the "special characters" for California? ;-)
You can have at what special characters are in a font on DaFont.com.
If German-style handwriting with a calligraphic pen is ok then try:
http://www.dafont.com/anke-calligraphic-f.font That Link should show you the charset available.

That is pretty nice and has all of the characters I would be looking for (mostly +,-><?/\*()%&#%@ is what I need to have). I like the level of refinement here, but I am looking for something less calligraphic more like this: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Good-Foot, but if possible more refined and something that doesn't look like it was written in such a hurry. I know I am being vague, but I am just having a really hard time finding something that is right, any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Another try: If you look for a rather neat hand printing font, maybe this one is the font for you: http://www.fontgrube.de/en/gapstown.htm
It comes in two versions (both regular and bold). The main difference is in the spacing. ISO 8859-1 charset is pretty complete except for that currency symbol no-one really needs.

Andreas

I would recommend you to take a look at Sudtipos fonts, they've a lot of nice script fonts. Look for Amorinda, Caffelatte, Malbeck...

http://www.sudtipos.com/home

I like Shimmer for a neat, simple yet elegant handwriting.
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/bluevinyl/shimmer/

We are hoping for a more technical look and feel possibly nice handwriting of an engineer or draftsman

Neutraface Drafting is based on the lettering of architect Richard Neutra:

And it was designed by Christian Schwartz so you know it's going to have a complete character set.

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Read Between the Leading podcast | Pixelspread

If all uppercase is okay try Pelle Pianos Handwritingfont PP Handwriting. A nice handwritten example with lots of special characters offers Jens Kutilek with Comic Jens (Download it at the last sentence of the article »Hier klicken zum Downloaden von Comic Jens.« means: »click hear to download«).

Memimas and more.

This one works well...

http://www.marksimonson.com/article/257/sneak-preview-sketchflow-print

Hi, Sean-

I'm about to release my Suomi Hand font. It's an OT font with some 700-800 ligatures. If this is to your liking, I could e-mail you a more comprehensive PDF.

Or you could try and make your own handwriting font at www.fontcapture.com.

Tomi, that is really excellent work.

Thanks, Stephen-

I should be able to get this to MyFonts during next week.

That’s not the answer Stephen wanted to hear, I think. :)

Myfonts newsletter has a discount for Black Jack Pro.

>Myfonts newsletter has a discount for Black Jack Pro.

Is it just me, but some of the diacritics look slightly less than hand drawn?

Check the foundry name on that one, Si. It's appropriate.

Perhaps Aniek fits the job?
http://www.caketype.com/type/aniek/index.html

Pieter

As Jens mentioned before, Fontcapture and Fontifier are online sevices that can convert your handwriting into a usable font for aprox. $10 USD.

I've used them before (when they were free) with relative success (simple hand drawn uppercase). I believe that FontCreator does a similar job, but can't confirm.

Does anyone know of a similar service?
This could help you get on your way before deciding on a specific font.

Suomi Hand Script is now available at FontShop. You can test it online. All 700+ ligatures work in the sampler.