door tags - typewriter font
 

Something recently came to light;
typewriter font variations.

Please stifle your laughter;
I never realized there were different font styles for typewriters because of my (very) limited interactions with them

When I was around ten my dad got an IMB-compatible computer, then when he left after grade six, his computer stayed behind;
I typed just about every school report from grade seven through to grade twelve on that computer - I sure was grateful for that dot-matrix printer, and the paper he left behind for (and the fact that the printer never ran out of in for the next six years!!)

But back to typewriters:

About twenty years ago (likely more), I grabbed a 1953(?) vintage ‘Royal’ typewriter because:
1) fantastic condition
2) good price
3) intentions to replace my Firebirds missing door sticker

You know, those blue stickers that have the vin and build date on them?

A local recently bought a repop sticker for his car and asked me if I had a typewriter;
In this conversation I realized my typewriter uses a lower case “L” as a number “1” - which I believe is fairly common.

I then realized distinct variations in font which reveal themselves on just about every number…
I then looked at the two stickers I pulled from cars, and saw variations between plants!?

So:

1) Does anyone know what style font I need to search out to have the most authentic door sticker?
(specifically for a 1970 Norwood produced car)

2) Does anyone know if there is some quick way to discern which models of typewriters can have that (or any other) font style?

Thanks!

PS - I didn’t realize my issue with no “1” because almost all the keys all have the character callouts worn off!

PPS:
I do have nostalgia for the likes of:
C:/DIR (to read installed programs on hard drive)
A:/DIR (to read programs on an inserted 5-1/2” floppy disc)
A:/ZAXXON.EXE (once I found the correct floppy disc)
or something to that effect ;)

Mike Noun may have a handle on the different fonts used at the assembly plants

LOL this is definitely a rabbit hole you can get lost in.

I researched the same thing when reproducing the VIN sticker on my Judge. I had printed pictures of multiple examples from this forum, and found that there were some differences plant to plant as well from the US to Canada.

Among typewriter fonts, the shape of the numbers seemed to vary and it was hard to find one that "did it all", but I ended up with one very close to what I wanted from a website that collects versions and makes downloads available.

Once I found that font, I downloaded a file to my laptop and it became available for use in Word.

I'm out of town until Friday but when I get back I will get the name of the font and a link to it.

Jonny, here's my original door sticker from my '70 Norwood Formula. I hope it helps you in your font quest.

Dennis

Cant help with the font quest... but there are companies out there that will put your cars info on one of these door stickers and they use the correct or very close to correct fonts & priniting... pretty sure these tags werent typed on with a traditional typewriter, they used some type of printer for the letters as there is no indentation like a normal typewriter would leave.

I looked into this some years ago for my 72 firebird door tag, there are or were accurate blank tags for sale on ebay that could have the info printed on by a local printer company or some of the sellers offer to print the info for you. Havent looked for the tags service for awhile but should still be out there.

I bought a reproduction sticker some time ago - and just hadn’t bothered filling it in, because it was one of those things a LOT further down on my “to do” list.

Same here, I pulled mine off for repaint and having a new one printed up was way down on the list... thanks for bringing this back up, will look into getting one made again.

I would say they used something like grocery workers used to use to stamp prices on cans and stuff? (rubber stamps)

Probably had them specially made to 'their' font? (like the "GM" font)

:)

I can attest to the rabbit hole from my label and decal project. I've spent so many hours hunting for the right fonts. Some are easier than others, but often times the labels I'm replicating were done with drafting tools so it's rare to find a 100% match. You really have to look at individual characters in detail and compare and it's time consuming. For example, if you look at your original decal the ascenders and descenders of the characters don't extend past the baselines (compare the 4s and 7s), but the typed version does.

MyFonts.com can be a good starting point. If you have a subscription to the Adobe suite of products, it comes with the Adobe type library. It's not super-extensive, but it has a bunch of the classics. I've gone to pretty deep parts of the web to find fonts that match old manual lettering templates. I often have to do weird things with kerning, letterspacing and linespacing to get them to match and on occasion break the font into outlines so I can manually tweak individual characters. Replicating the effects of old printing and output processes adds another layer of complication. To be honest, I don't know a lot about the printing processes back in the day. I do know it's been challenging to duplicate the effects of a cheap analog mass printing processes digitally. Mike Noun's work on window stickers is impressive in that regard.

I've avoided doing any VIN-related work so far, so I don't have any specific recommendations for matching this particular font but here's a few to get you started:

Automatic Typewriter Bold: https://www.myfonts.com/products/bol...ewriter-530895

Typewriter Medium: https://www.myfonts.com/collections/typewriter-font-urw

Andrew Typewriter: https://www.myfonts.com/collections/...-andrew-tomson

From the brief research I did on these door tags, the fonts were done by something called an impact printer, not sure all the details or how that worked but these were done on a mass produced scale for the 100s of thousands of vehicles GM made.

This place says they can reproduce the lettering with the correct printer.

https://www.gloveboxoptions.com/shop...-certification

Another one.

https://ecsauto.com/products/vin-dat...72-gm-vehicles

Having someone like Mike Noun (or that kink) as a backup is nice;
But garage sale season is upon us, and I am thinking of looking for a different typewriter - and still doing it without the complication of computer printed fonts...

I am starting to think that I might be best served with a typewriter that's nearly two decades newer than this one to get more "generic" fonts - then taking it a step further by finding one with a dedicated "1"...

It appears to me, from my cursory searching, that the cursive effect (if that's what we might call the variations in typewriter fonts) went away as computers were becoming the norm;
I'd think that in the summer of 1970 at the Norwood plant, odds are someone was at an electric typewriter, manually filling in these decals one at a time;
To me, this would also explain the variation in date and vin location on the sticker;
If this was some sort of an automated process, there should be virtually no variation in location of information on the decal.

@Dennis - thanks for the example.
Yours perfectly matches my June 1971 Norwood example.

It's so interesting to do archeology on the tools and techniques they might have used back in the day. With hundreds of thousands of unique labels to produce, as Jeff said, they likely used an early line or impact printer (like an IBM 1403) which had been around since the late '50s. I'd bet the make and model of the printer differed by factory and year which would account for the type variations.

All that said, ECS does good work. If I needed this decal, I'd have them do it.

As someone who prints onto premade forms on a daily basis using modern technology, you would (or not) be surprised by how much variation there is in between spacing on the same pages printed with the exact same forms. The ones we use very as much as a half inch page to page, and that is with much newer equipment. I doubt an automated system back then would exact as well. Everything else you said is spot on though.

Absolutely not.

With line rates ranging from 60 per hour (one completed vehicle per minute) up to 100 vehicles per hour there is no way a human being could load the sticker, cue up the spaces and manually type the information in in the 30 to 45 seconds available per job.

All of the plant documents (SPID labels, door labels, tire pressure labels, Mulroney window stickers) were broadcast from a central plant database and printed by various remote printers throughout the plant, whether the old IBM tractor paper or rolls of adhesive stickers. These devises were for sure in use by the early 1960s (as demonstrated by the 1961 PHS packets/build sheets, with the tractor edges still visible).

This would account for similarities within the plant (like the propagation of spelling errors such as "Heavey" Duty Fan Clutches on 1964 Pontiacs) but also allow for differences in verbiage between plants.

K

I would encourage all y'all to get a copy of "Echos of Norwood" if you do not already have it.

https://www.norwoodassemblyplant.com...f-norwood.html

Also - although it is Camaro centric the processes related here pertain to Firebirds and (with minor variations) most assembly plants in general.

http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml

K

How close is this?

I wasn't too concerned about matching the EXACT font or sourcing and using a typewriter so I just created a MSWord document and used Courier New with a font size of 11. I printed several copies on blank paper then held the decal behind the printed form to make sure I had everything in the right place. When I had everything lined up and looking OK I simply taped the edges of the blank reproduction decal to a peice of blank paper and fed it through my lazer printer.

Like this ;)

That appears to be bang-on for a 70 Norwood decal.

The font I ended up using for my label (Oshawa car), is called Corpus Typewriter.

It is quite different from the Prestige Pica that HFR posted.

As I didn't have the original label to refer to, I scoured the site for another pic of an Oshawa label and came up with the ones below. When looking at typewriter fonts, I found the 3 and 4 on the Oshawa labels were different from some of the older typewriter fonts, and while not perfect, the Corpus matched the 3 better than others.

The label that Unruhjonny is working on has much different font than the Oshawa ones, so this info isn't really helpful to him but does show that there was variation from plant to plant and may help someone else.

Rabbit hole indeed!

https://www.azfonts.net/fonts/corpus...regular-314548