What font are BUICK badges and emblems?

What font are BUICK badges and emblems?
ANY of them.

Has anybody done the research and settled on a font _name_ that's close to what they actually are?

I'm trying to get some vinyl lettering to match the OEM.

ElectraJim

 

Id like to know too...
Ive searched and googled.. but no results...
Ive played with fonts I found online...

the closest I have is
Wide Latin

 

It's most likely proprietary font which means you could match to a font close to it, but you'll never get the actual font.

 

The GS is:

Times New Roman, Bold, Italics.

 

GS It does look a lot like it when enlarged.

 

Yeah I agree with Dale... unless you had the original information from Buick you would be hard pressed to recreate the font exactly with current type faces. If you have a program like Photoshop you may be able to modify the parameters to get certain fonts close, but it would be much better to trace the original. It just won't look right otherwise.

You would need as good quality of a scanned image of an emblem as you could get (making sure the image is not warped AT ALL). Then a program such as Illustrator or CAD to create an EPS (or other vector type) file. And depending on how fancy you want it to look, you need to add other things to it - like recreating the chrome or the black backing (this is where it will get fairly complicated). To accomplish all this you need someone who knows the software (I am sure there are plenty of people here, like myself or Pet Chicken who know graphics programs well), and a print shop who can make you some vinyl decals. Done! :Comp:

Here is a sample of the Times New Roman with the badge attached. It looks close at first glance but there are some really big differences! Times is actually not even close to the GS font.. :Smarty:

 

Electra Jim,

I did some searching around for you on Google and came up with some interesting information. The first thing I found when I googled "Buick Font" was this link to a font Forum:

http://www.typophile.com/node/4797

You should read the discussion. since the thread they are talking about is to an old thread that's not in the Data base I looked up the first posters info, found his blog, and sent him an email asking if the font they are referring to is the font in the Buick Logo here:

http://www.velocityjournal.com/images/logos/buick.jpg


He was kind enough to respond -very quickly I might add- with some useful information. I'll just post the email here:

I did look up the link he gave me and it costs about $30 to buy the font for your own use. If you want to buy it, I would be happy to see what I could do with it in Illustrator, although I claim no special skills beyond a self-taught-amateur-graphic-artist/Web-designer and make no promises.

Hopefully that will give you a starting point.

 

Actually if you look up the Graphic artist he mentions, I found this font designed by him which is very similar:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/ef/americana/morelikethis.html

 

I am revisiting this issue, as I am working on some valve cover decals. Most of the links above are dead (boo hoo).

Anybody already been on this goose chase?

 

I had contemplated making 67-69 valve cover decals with the embossing but quickly found out that the embossing tools were more of an investment than I wanted to make.

To make an accurate rendering I took a photo of an original decal and imported it into a CAD program. From there I was able to trace the letters and numbers and create a CAD file. I was never able to find a font that was exactly the same as what Buick used.

 

I've been looking for the font or a "GS by Buick" JPEG that was clear enough to make a vector file out of. We have a very small Etsy t-shirt business and I wanted to make myself a couple of shirts and decals (maybe a hat too) to try it out.

No luck yet though.

 

Thanks Mike. That's awesome. I am currently working on the 350 valve cover decal which looked like this in 1968. Well, actually it looked a lot better in 1968... Still the reproductions are garbage. i think I can make something a lot better, even if it's not embossed, just by using the striping on the numbers to give it detail... We shall see. Your "BUICK" above is nice and helpful too...

 

I think the striping in the numbers and even the peppering in the emblem to simulate the embossing would look good, I would be interested in seeing your final product and finding out what material you used for the decal.