Who knew that you couldn’t buy the exact font used on the Organ Grinder sign?
There are a lot of “Old West” fonts out there with a “spurred” style on the letters – you see them a lot on taverns/saloons and country music albums alike.
But, as it turns out, the lettering on the original Organ Grinder sign in Portland was hand-drawn by the sign company’s graphic artist, and an exact match wasn’t commercially available. (The Organ Grinder company used a more common, narrower font in their print advertising, but it’s not well-suited to film/video work.)
Early in the project, I licensed a collection of fonts that were close, but not exact, and that font was only basic letters and numbers, no symbols like quotation marks, question marks, etc., which meant frequently having to switch fonts in the middle of a paragraph. (That font still has its uses in the project, but will no longer be the main font.)
I found another font from a vendor that was similar, but needed to be fattened up by about 40%. When I asked the designer their fee for customizing the font, they asked about the documentary project, and liked what they saw so far. The designer generously offered to create a completely new, custom font FROM SCRATCH, using a set of photographs of the sign as a guide – at no charge to the production! All they asked was for credit, and to be able to retain the rights to sell the font commercially to others.
Well, the day has come, the font is now complete, and I am proud to announce that designer Font Mesa has created a wonderful font called “My Pizza”, which captures the look and feel of the Organ Grinder sign amazingly well. This will be the film’s main font for identifying people on-screen, and is also now the title/heading font on the web site.
If you would like a copy for yourself, it’s on sale now with a special introductory price at Creative Market, Fontspring, and will appear soon on MyFonts. Check out Font Mesa’s other designs, too.
Thank you, Michael of Font Mesa, for your hard work and your generous contribution to the project.
You can help support the project by purchasing from the Crowdfunding Shop.
