Considerations in Font Modification

[homeboy]

Newbie here. Not sure if this is right place to post this.

I have an ongoing need to use Helvetica Neue Black with a particular texture. See www.greaterthan.org.

1. Is it legal to create a specialized version of this font? I do not want to sell it. I just want to use it for this particular ongoing project.
2. I don't want to be in the font creation business. With the right product, is this fairly easy to do? For instance, just call up each character, plop the texture on it and go to the next one?
3. Would the font retain all other existing characteristics, e.g., kerning, hinting, etc.
4. What product should I use to do this?
5. If this is NOT an easy project, are there people here who would take on the task?

[Arno Enslin]

Hi homeboy,

1. It is probably not legal, because you don’t design the typeface from the scratch, but you would have to edit Helvetica Neue Black in a font editor. And I assume editing/decompiling Linotype fonts would break the license.

2. I assume, it is relatively easy to integrate a texture like yours with the help of a filter, but the size of the texture would grow with the font size.

3. Yes.

4. FontLab Studio ships with a few filters, but you also could do that in illustrator for example, although you had to transfer the outlines back to the font in the end.

5. You could ask on Typophile.com, if there would not be the problem with the license.

-------

But maybe you can partly solve the problem by decreasing the opacity (CSS) of the text and using a background image with the texture. Or maybe it meanwhile is possible with CSS to overlay only the text with an image. I assume, that the font size would grow much with the texture and it may lower the rendering speed.

[homeboy]

Thanks for the answers. I'm disappointed by the first answer. I had hoped the illegal/legal dividing line would have been for-sale/not-for-sale. But it is what it is.

BTW:
Right now, each time I do this, it involves a trip to Photoshop.
It's okay if the texture grows with the font size.
There is considerable print work using these fonts in addition to web work.

[Arno Enslin]

I searched a bit on Myfonts for adhesive and distressed fonts. Here you can see, what’s possible, I just picked up two very well made fonts:

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/doubletwo/xxii-black-block/eroded/

and

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/phospho/adhesive-nr-seven/regular/

Your texture would consist of two colors only.

But I had an idea, which is more promising: You had to build an inverted Helvetica Neue Black. Maybe a font, which is comparable with such an inverted Helvetica is already available. And then you only had to define a textured background image in your CSS. And maybe additionally in combination with the CSS3 box-shadow effect.

Example of an inverted font: http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/coniglio/carbon14/carbon14-black-tape/

As you can see, the black box would cover the textured background. In case of Myfonts the background is white. But if it would be textured, the letters would also be textured.

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