Erie Railroad Mahoning division HCD

[C855B]

Well, yes and no. Text-heavy corporate graphic IDs will be based on available fonts... it's a matter of whose variation of whatever font. Not helping matters is for any given "original" font design, there are dozens of knockoffs sidestepping any royalties built into the original. Anyway, RR examples of this are Univers 75 Black for Great Northern BSB (carried forward to BN), and Futura Bold in the Union Pacific medallion, while a modified version is used for rolling stock lettering.

... An executive approves a graphic artists rendering ...

You want to know how bad this gets? We had a "financial printing" (Securities and Exchange Commission filing preparation) customer who insisted on a particular font for their SEC registration documents. No, the really close knockoff that came with our existing typesetters (@ $300K each) would not do, they were adamant that we were to use the original designer artwork, only available on a specific manufacturer's machine. So considering the size of this customer, we buckled, and spent another $250K on a typesetter we didn't otherwise need but had to run and maintain. It wasn't a year later the boss starting busting my chops over department overhead costs, and started firing staff. Effin' A. 

[sirenwerks]

To match your original warehouse sign, try this free font - http://www.dafont.com/american-captain.font. 

[Chris333]

I downloaded the font and Gimp. When I create the text in Gimp it is very fuzzy. When I invert the colors I can't see it because the background doesn't change. Is there an easier way or program to do this? I picked Gimp because I found a video on adding an outline to text.

EDIT: well I got the background black by spray painting it  followed the steps to outline and got this:

[peteski]

It is fuzzy because you are workign with raster (bitmap) images.  Vector-format graphic programs like Corel Draw do stuff like that (with no fuzzies) with couple clicks of a mouse.  You can pick up older versions of Corel (which still have way more functionality than what you'll need) on eBay for not much money. Or there are also free vector-based editors like Inkscape. I'm into Corel Draw, but I know some members here use Inkscape.

As far as Gimp goes, what is the dpi setting in your drawing?  It should be less fuzzy if you pick 600 or 1200 dpi (anything more won't make much difference to a human eye).

[peteski]

Here is a sign (with a font I have) done in Corel Draw and saved as a 300 dpi  PNG file. The conversion to PNG with aliasing enabled will show the fuzzy edges when magnified.  But if I print from Corel Draw then the the vectors get rasterized in the print driver at a high resolution (not something you'll see when you look at the printout).

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If I disable anitaliasing the fuzzy edges go away but you end up with jaggies. But this is just a demonstration. If the design is in a format with high enough dpi setting then all these artifacts are invisible to the human eye.

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[Chris333]

Thanks for that. In my fuzzy image I had it set to 120,000 pixels/inch in the settings.

I'll try Inkscape to see if that is any easier.

[peteski]

Thanks for that. In my fuzzy image I had it set to 120,000 pixels/inch in the settings.

I'll try Inkscape to see if that is any easier.

120,000ppi (dpi)?!  I have never heard of using such a high setting.  The letters in your drawing are about 20 pixels high. That, in 1:1 scale would mean that those letters are 0.000166" high!  That is too small, even for T gauge trains. 

Another good thing about vector format is that when you are drawing your designs, you can easily do it in the 1:1 scale without worrying about dpi and such.

[iais509]

I made some quick edits to the font posted above to make it look a bit more like the pic posted on the previous page.  If this works for you, let me know and I can send a vector pdf sized to the dimensions you need.  ~Chris

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[sirenwerks]

Glad I can help with the font.

[iais509]

It is pretty spot on.  Nice find, sirenwerks! 

[Chris333]

Thanks everyone. Stop by the Railwire bar and grill for a round on me! 

[Chris333]

120,000ppi (dpi)?!  I have never heard of using such a high setting.  The letters in your drawing are about 20 pixels high. That, in 1:1 scale would mean that those letters are 0.000166" high!  That is too small, even for T gauge trains. 

Another good thing about vector format is that when you are drawing your designs, you can easily do it in the 1:1 scale without worrying about dpi and such.

I have no idea what I'm doing I just followed this video around 1:30 mark:

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I even had to look up how to zoom out. There is a zoom in button, but no zoom out button. You just use the - key.

[peteski]

Ah I see it now - it is not 120,000 but 120.000 (the resolution of the entire image: 120 ppi (dpi).  That is way too coarse for N scale but ok for 0 scale I guess.

Create new drawing and set X Y resolution to 600.000 ppi  (remember, that is a dot not a comma).  Then draw your sign and it should be usable.  Also, instead of defining Height and Width in pixels, change the units and defing it in inches or mm - that way you can define it close to what your graphics inside will be and you won't have to worry about pixel count.

So if the sign is to be 0.5" X 5.0" make the drawing to be somethign like 2" X 7".

[Chris333]

Thanks again to all who helped here and offline. I ended up with many to choose from, but could only glue up one.

[wcfn100]

My spidey-sense tells me the last word on that sign is 'available', but until a better picture comes along, what you have is most excellent.


Jason