PAF sticker font?

[belwar]

Has anyone come across a matching font for PAF stickers? I've been looking for a while and cant find a good one. I've got a printer to make the color transfer but cant find the right font. I have no problem purchasing a good font if its one that is for sale.

[Possum]

....

There isn't one.

[David Schwab]

Yeah, that probably was done by hand originally.

You could probably have a font made from a sample. There are programs like FontLab and Fontographer that you can create fonts.

I have FontLab and used to use Fontographer. I haven't used them in a while though.

[Bill M]

That font on them stickers was probably the standard font on the machine used to print them. Does anyone know what machine was used?

[Steve Conner]

Machine? I thought the stickers were hand wound

Seriously, just take a picture of the original sticker, import it into Adobe Illustrator or similar, zoom right into it and trace over the letters. I think Illustrator even does that for you now.

[belwar]

Actually thats a pretty good idea - I have a new (old) PAF coming my way and I think the sticker is in good shape.

I cant wait to put it against my current generation of pickups and see how it sounds - Though Im not trying for PAF perfection in all honesty. I want a strange dicotemy (sp?) of super vintage specs, but killer modern tone.

bel.

[David King]

Once you have the letters traced you'll probably want to vectorize them so you can smooth out the curves and straighten the lines a bit. Bitmapped shapes are a lot harder to re-size and it may look terrible when you try to shrink it down.
There is an online program you can use to vectorize small bitmap graphics, It costs you something to use but well worth it over buying Fontopia. Try Illustrator's vector conversion first and see how that does for you. Fontopia is really good at what it does but not much need for it unless you plan to do a lot of recreation waterslide decals. You are in for sticker shock at the decal printer too.

[David Schwab]

That font on them stickers was probably the standard font on the machine used to print them. Does anyone know what machine was used?

It wouldn't have been a machine back then. More than likely the artwork was prepared larger than needed and by hand. Then it would have been shot with a camera to produce a piece of film. That would have been used to make the decals. Water slide decals have been made using silk screen printing since the 1930s.

[David Schwab]

Once you have the letters traced you'll probably want to vectorize them so you can smooth out the curves and straighten the lines a bit. Bitmapped shapes are a lot harder to re-size and it may look terrible when you try to shrink it down.
There is an online program you can use to vectorize small bitmap graphics, It costs you something to use but well worth it over buying Fontopia. Try Illustrator's vector conversion first and see how that does for you. Fontopia is really good at what it does but not much need for it unless you plan to do a lot of recreation waterslide decals. You are in for sticker shock at the decal printer too.

It would be fairly simple to trace a scan of a decal in Illustrator by hand. You get much better results than using the auto trace function. That adds too many points sometimes. I've reconstructed logos that way many times.

[Bill M]

It wouldn't have been a machine back then. More than likely the artwork was prepared larger than needed and by hand. Then it would have been shot with a camera to produce a piece of film. That would have been used to make the decals. Water slide decals have been made using silk screen printing since the 1930s.

I'm not so sure that the PAF stickers were screen printed. I've done some screen printing before and if the object moves it gets smeared, unlike this doubled print on this original PAF. Thats why I assume they were ink printed.

[Sam Lee Guy]

Futura demibold velly close.

[David Schwab]

I'm not so sure that the PAF stickers were screen printed. I've done some screen printing before and if the object moves it gets smeared, unlike this doubled print on this original PAF. Thats why I assume they were ink printed.

That decal must have been printed twice.

[ATTACH]9248[/ATTACH]

Well it is ink, but I doubt it was offset printing. I've only heard of water side decals being screen printed.

That decal was printed twice. They certainly did not use a letter press. Don't forger they also had to print the black square. With screen printing they could print opaque gold ink over the black. With offset they would have to use the black to define the shape of the letters, which would be spread under the black. You would not be able to double print the label that way on an offset press.

Decal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A water-slide (or water-dip) decal is screen-printed on a layer of water-soluble adhesive on a water-resistant paper, that must first be dipped in water prior to its application.

History of Decals

The last big deal to impact decals was the advent of silk-screen printing. Commercially developed in the 1930's(?), silk-screen printing would first make it mark not in the printing of color, but in the ability to lay down a cover-coat or top-coat of lacquer on top of the printed design. This would then be used as the transfer medium of the color, instead of the tissue paper. In 1936, the first firable decal was printed using a top-coat. It was a glass decal. But it proved to be so easy to use that within 3 years all glass decals had top-coats.

[Possum]

....

they were silk screened. I don't think offset printing existed back then, only letterpress and no way would those be letterpress. Also you can tell they are silk screened because the letters plug up from excess ink and because the area outside the black is the lacquer coating which darkens over time. Its also hard to print metallic gold inks with rich larger grained powders in offset.

For my stickers I just scanned a really pristine PAF sticker and cleaned up the mistakes and fill ins. I'm not even attempting to make an accurate sticker, and using decals became a real chore to do right. You have to time it really right to get them to stick well. They do look right though...

[Bill M]

Yah. You are probably right about the screen printing. Come to think of it the letters are slightly raised on a paf decal which would be indicative of screen printing. what threw me off was the doubled print on the pic I posted. I didn't think that would be possible with screen print, but I guess it is. I know fender had a screen printing machine in the 50's that they used to print all their stuff on. I have a pic of it somewhere.

[David Schwab]

they were silk screened. I don't think offset printing existed back then, only letterpress and no way would those be letterpress. Also you can tell they are silk screened because the letters plug up from excess ink and because the area outside the black is the lacquer coating which darkens over time. Its also hard to print metallic gold inks with rich larger grained powders in offset.

Exactly. I wasn't sure if offset printing was around back then, but I didn't think it was because my brother used to do hot lead typesetting when I was a kid. So it wasn't common. And you can't do decals that way.

[EDIT] I looked it up and rotary offset printing was invented in 1875. Rubber offset rollers were invented in 1901. But it's still not what was used for printing decals. It wouldn't be possible to do it for a decal since it's on the backing sheet. It's actually formed by the screen printing process.

I've been in commercial offset printing since 1980, and I've never seen decals printed. They are screen printed.