Your favorite examples of Letter Tailoring
Letter Tailoring is when a logo is made or a sign painted and the letters are modified for a better fit.
Do you have a favorite example?
I have collected examples from Doyald Young and Gerard Huerta, but I would be interested in other examples too.
I am of course especially interested in those examples that might apply to text face design because they are subtle enough and or work with roman forms, but feel free to post your favorite even if it falls outside this range.




























16.May.2008 5.33am
I finessed an E in a logo to make two parts of it equal in width. Does that count?
. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO
16.May.2008 6.33am
I love 1906 Will Keith Kellogg’s and 1957 Lavazza restyled by Armando Testa.
16.May.2008 8.09am
16.May.2008 9.10am
Alessandro, Bert, Let’s see them!
James, is the K different?
16.May.2008 10.59am
16.May.2008 11.05am
Little known fact, the ITC Franklin Gothics supplied with Office have modified lc ’t’ to make the word Microsoft shape better.
16.May.2008 11.44am
Alessandro, nice!
Si, that is a mighty cool bit of letter-fitting trivia! Is it quite subtle? I assume it is the left side of the horizontal t stroke. Yes?
17.May.2008 10.31am
I’ll try to dig up the visual I made in 1995.
17.May.2008 11.43am
Thanks Si!
19.May.2008 8.50am
If I am not mistaken The Kelloggs redrawn by Charlie Hughes in the 80’s.
Michael
19.May.2008 10.29am
Something recent. ?
21.May.2008 12.53am
Not something special nor a favourite of mine, but rather one of those typical techniques used by lettering artists. Hope it fits your bill all the same.
examples that might apply to text face design because they are subtle enough
Note the second ‘A’: adjusted for a better white-space balance.
21.May.2008 8.28am
OK — Here’s my crime against typedesign: fiddled with the E to make both words the same width:
Under the logo: original E and final one.
Sidenote: I always build type-based logo’s with the main type in size 40 pts. This makes it a lot easier to add extra type-elements in lay-outs. Eg when using logo in 30% — size type will be 12 pts, etc.
. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO
21.May.2008 9.45am
Bert, Florian, these are both very nice examples. Thanks for posting them!
James, Huemiller is certainly altered; but not i think, for the sake of a better “fit”. Still, thanks!
Here is one from Gerard Huerta. What kinds of tailoring can you spot?
21.May.2008 10.45am
Fair enough, but at the risk of a minor hijack, here’s what I did. BTW this is a paint and coatings manufacturer. I’d be very interested in improving the fit of the letters and understanding how I’ve mucked it up so far.
21.May.2008 11.33am
Aha! I spoke too carelessly I see. Sorry!
So there was more to it than that.... Cool!
I am still having a hard time being 100% sure what you did with the u+el, probably because of resolution. Is that a shorter serif?
The changes for the m, are they to get the word to gel or to make the m work better at larger sizes? My guess is both.
The question of letter tailoring is very linked with the intended scale even if they are in many way quite different ideas.
21.May.2008 11.57am
Could you post a PDF with the before & after? Then I could print it & get a better idea.
21.May.2008 11.58am
Pretty unsophisticated client, so I clipped a few serifs back so the single mark would print at any size. It also fixed a general crowded feeling and allowed a better rhythm in the white spaces—so the “i” dot shifted a bit as well.
The “m” character just seemed too wide so I carefully hemmed it in a bit. The mark would appear with photos of fences and decking so a almost mechanical beat was what I was going for.
21.May.2008 12.46pm
Aren’t those T’s narrowed (in ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST)? And the second R’s leg is definitely brought in.
21.May.2008 1.41pm
Send me an email and I’ll send an attachment. My server is teh suck.
22.May.2008 9.31am
Here is a quote that Gerard Huerta was kind enough to give me.
The Architectural Digest masthead was designed to be slightly condensed and
more tightly spaced than I would normally want. It is not a font, but a
hand-drawn logo. The purpose is to give it more presence on the cover. At
nineteen characters it is the one of the more complex mastheads.
As we know a font’s characters are meant to all work with each other. In a
logo where we have fixed relationships we can draw the best possible
letterform combinations.
There are two ligatures in the artwork: “AR” and “RAL.” In the first
ligature the leg (and angle) of the “R” is allowed to tuck nicely under the
“C.” In the second ligature the angle of the leg of the “R” has been changed
to allow the consistent spacing that has been established.
There are two “C”s in the word “Architectural.” The second “C” has an
unfortunate neighbor “T”, and combined with the open space left by the “C”
it leaves more negative space than one would want in this situation.
Therefore, the ending of the “C” has been slightly extended and weight has
been added to that part of it to compensate for the excessive negative
space.
The last thing to mention is the bookmatched serifs in the combinations
“CT”, “ES”, and “ST.”
James, I will comment further on the Huemiller later today or the next.