I am working on a project that is spoofing (but also celebrating) utilitarian, un-self-conscious bureaucratic designs, the kind you would see at the DMV or from a government utility.
I am looking for fonts that will look authentic, but might also be dated (preferably from 1970s) and/or show poor design taste.
Chainprinter is the typical computer print out you'd see on licences, magazine subscriptions, report cards etc from the 60's to the mid 80's.
Telidon is similar to an early Epson dot matrix. But they didn't hit the streets until 1978 . . . before that it was mostly teletypes, daisy wheels and chain printers.
Early daisy Wheel printers shared some of the same fonts as electric typewriters. So you could dig for some IBM Selectric fonts and get a similar effect.
Offices had name plates, often with a fake woodgrain on white plastic. A router etched out the letters and it was usually a font like this and usually all caps.
> some IBM Selectric fonts
Yeah, a lot of offices in those days used IBM typewriters to create documents and forms. Photocopiers existed but I'm not sure how common they were; I remember many offices using carbon paper if they just needed a few copies, or mimeograph machines if they needed many.
If they had their forms commercially printed, it would usually be whatever fonts were available at the local print shop. Today we're used to having a huge number of fonts to choose from, but in those days a small printer often had a pretty limited selection, and layouts created by the printer were often dull and static (centered heads in caps, justified text, etc.).
Courier?
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