Call of Cthulhu fonts, better than ever!

[Thomas Phinney]

I am pleased to say that I have just launched a Kickstarter campaign to support my development of Cristoforo, the revival of Columbus, the typeface many of us know as the classic Call of Cthulhu logo and supplement cover font. Backers can choose their level of support and receive a range of rewards, including the fonts themselves.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...with-a-cthulhu

This antique has never had a decent digital version, and as a professional font geek, I am intending to change that. I've already gotten a decent start, but I need to fix spacing and do good kerning, add myriad accented characters, and do the italic (which has never been digitized).

Thanks to close attention to the original source, and considerable experience in type design and production, some letters of Cristoforo are already in better shape than the type seen in the CoC logo and book covers! But I need your help to make it perfect.

[Black-Seal-Editor]

Backed!

[Thomas Phinney]

I should add that the good folks at Sixtystone Press and Miskatonic River Press have been fans and supporters since last year. Special thanks to Adam Crossingham and Tom Lynch for their early encouragement, and more recently to Dustin at Chaosium and Andrew Leman (HPLHS and various HPL film productions).

[PoC]

Kudos to the gentleman who hand binds in leather his own copy of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook!

[Thomas Phinney]

Kudos to the gentleman who hand binds in leather his own copy of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook!

Doesn't everyone?

The main volume includes a copy of the Keeper's Companion, while I bound the two Investigator's Companions as a separate, second volume. But because they were from existing books, I couldn't do sewn signatures; you have to have folded paper for that. See photo here: http://www.thomasphinney.com/2012/04...s-are-illegal/ (you can see the foil-stamped cover titles, but you can't see that I colored the paper edges blood red!).

I'm currently working on similar treatment for about eight other RPG books, where I assemble them from PDFs and do sewn signatures and the whole nine yards. My seven-year-old daughter is even doing one, with my guidance and occasional help. She is extremely excited, and keeps on telling me that nobody else her age that she knows has ever bound their own hardcover book!

For my part, the thing I am really eager for is the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion. I want to bind it with Masks as a single volume.

I am pondering some sort of integrated storage system (envelopes?) for clues, right in the book. It's got to be easier than some of the weirder stuff I did in my advanced bookbinding class, back in the day.

To tie this back to the Kickstarter campaign, one of my higher-end rewards for a backer is to do this treatment for a book of your choice! You supply (or pay for) a licensed PDF, and I do the sewn signatures and binding, and use digital foil stamping to do the title on the cover in Cristoforo.

Cheers,

T

[dce]

I've also backed this project ... the world needs more fonts for Call of Cthulhu books and props.

It would be good, though, Thomas to see some kind of sample of what you've got planned for the postcards -- at the moment I've just sprung for the finished font, but if the cards were particularly gorgeous I'd probably be willing to up my contribution (and maybe others would too )


Dean (from Adelaide)

[dce]

I'm sure Thomas will put up more about this soon ... but for anyone who was wavering as to whether to commit some money to this Kickstarter, you may be interested to know that an update just came out announcing that the final font(s) available to backers will also include a bunch of extra variant letter-shapes particularly useful to typesetting horror-related material. While the original font has some nifty swashes which look kinda like tentacles (which I'm guessing is why Chaosium originally picked it for the "official" Cthulhu font originally), Thomas is promising variant versions which exaggerate this "tentacular" look even more by enlarging the swashes. Plus he's going to include the swashes as isolated elements, to be used for rules or other ornamental lines.

If (like me) you're eyeing off this font for Cthulhu book titles or logo designs ... these new features open up entirely new realms of artistic possibilities ... You could also design some funky handouts around these iconic CoC design elements.


Dean (from Adelaide)

[Thomas Phinney]

I would say something but Dean pretty much said it all!

I will just add that it was his suggestion in the first place. Thanks, old bean!

T

[Thomas Phinney]

Oh, and sorry about not having any previews for the postcards, or the other rewards. There's the small matter of designing them, which I don't want to do until the Kickstarter passes its funding target (or at least it's clear that it will). I've already done too much on the upright font!

[Taavi]

How about the symbols suggested by Graham Walmsley for scenario scene indication? In particular, Elder Signs with differing numbers of branches...

[Thomas Phinney]

I could be talked into that. I would probably make it a separate font so as not to distract/confuse the normal folks. The main fonts are not *only* for Cthulhu fans, even if they (we) may be a significant audience.

[dce]

I could be talked into that. I would probably make it a separate font so as not to distract/confuse the normal folks. The main fonts are not *only* for Cthulhu fans, even if they (we) may be a significant audience.

What? You mean there's no standard Unicode number/slot for "Elder Sign glyph"? How do these typographers expect us to save the planet??

[seriously, though, a separate font sounds like a cool idea: I'd love to be able to pick from a pull-down offering "Roman", "Italic" and "Squamous" ]


Dean (from Adelaide)

[Thomas Phinney]

What? You mean there's no standard Unicode number/slot for "Elder Sign glyph"? How do these typographers expect us to save the planet??

You know, it will be a fairly small number of people who will get that, but for those who do, it's really funny.

[seriously, though, a separate font sounds like a cool idea: I'd love to be able to pick from a pull-down offering "Roman", "Italic" and "Squamous" ]

Just plain "Squamous" might be too unclear, but... how about "Squamous Symbols"?

Oops, gotta run. I'm actually off at a conference right now. "Reading Digital" in Rochester NY.

Cheers,

T

[cjearkham]

Just noticed this, and became a backer. Hope it pans out.

[dce]

As a small homage of my own to the beauty that is the Columbus font (at least as it was used for many of those iconic CoC book covers in the 80s and 90s), I've put together a small poster capturing some of those great titles. There's a longer blurb about it over on my blog ... but here's a (quarter res) version for your viewing pleasure:



Naturally the poster title is "The Wrong South Pacific Cruise". Thomas .. if you somehow think it will help your Kickstarter, steal it as you please! I really hope this project gets up, and that publishers start using this great font again as a "signature" font for the game.

[PS: this poster is made using the currently available cheap-and-a-bit-nasty version of the Columbus font ... it would look a LOT more, well, tentacly with Thomas' font. Which is sort of the point.]

[UPDATE: I have now created a version of this poster using Thomas' actual prototype for Cristoforo ... check the next page of this thread to see it. I'm leaving this original version up so that anybody so inclined can "compare and contrast" the slightly-amateurish freebie font with the work of a font pro]


Dean (from Adelaide)