[will slow gto]

Ken, you are crushing this! May the karma gods be shining on you and your round port heads.

[dataway]

Got my decals ... Love Them

[Verdoro 68]

Ok Dennis, here's a pass at the 455 HO emissions label. This one is deceptive - seems simple, but there's a bunch of details to capture...and I keep finding them when I think I have it. Fonts could use a little more massaging in some places. I'm guessing they moved on from water slides to stickers at this point?






And a pass at the controversial and elusive '69 emissions decal. Without an original, I assume it would be based on the '68 style but I don't really have enough to go on. I won't produce this one unless someone comes up with an original. Reading through old threads, it may have even been paper.

[Shiny]

Wow, that's so good!

The use of all the "periods" for abbreviations and incomplete sentences caught my eye. I view it as part of the history and nostalgia - the transition to digital everything. As we all started typing, adding punctuation became a nuisance and the styles changed.

[Verdoro 68]

Originally Posted by Shiny

Wow, that's so good!

The use of all the "periods" for abbreviations and incomplete sentences caught my eye. I view it as part of the history and nostalgia - the transition to digital everything. As we all started typing, adding punctuation became a nuisance and the styles changed.

Thank you! All the details add up. I do my best to capture all the oddities in spacing and characters even if it's funky. For example, the @ signs and parenthesis are different fonts and the spacing between letters and words is generally pretty inconsistent and tailored to match the original. Reproducing the illustrations can also be really time consuming.

And...I just noticed a typo on step 6 in the mockup above so here's a new one. I'm not sure the type is exactly right for the steps. Looks a little heavier in the original, but I'll see how it outputs.

[SD455DJ]

Originally Posted by Verdoro 68

Thank you! All the details add up. I do my best to capture all the oddities in spacing and characters even if it's funky. For example, the @ signs and parenthesis are different fonts and the spacing between letters and words is generally pretty inconsistent and tailored to match the original. Reproducing the illustrations can also be really time consuming.

And...I just noticed a typo on step 6 in the mockup above so here's a new one. I'm not sure the type is exactly right for the steps. Looks a little heavier in the original, but I'll see how it outputs.

Ken, I just saw this...frickin' nice! Excellent work! This is sooo much better than the other decals out there. My comments are the fonts need a little massaging, like you said earlier, and the timing should be 12 degrees instead of 10. The line work looks a little too light, too. So sorry if I'm being to fussy.

It is a decal, not a water transfer, but seems to have a clear vinyl protective cover, or coating (?) on it...maybe?

Thanks for your fantastic work!

Dennis

[Verdoro 68]

No worries, lets get it right! I'll keep messing with the line work trying to find a good compromise on weight. I had it heavier, but it looked TOO heavy based on the pics. Please feel free to keep proofreading as well. I fixed the timing - not sure where the 10 degrees came from considering I drew the illustration with 12!

I think the way I had the '68 emissions stickers done with the glossy UV protective coating would work well for these.

[SD455DJ]

Ken, I also agree with you on the '69 350,400, 428 4-bbl emissions decal to not be completed until we find an original.

Dennis

[SD455DJ]

Just for reference, here's Dan's '69 350HO Firebird's original air cleaner (PV code 6485501) with the HD filter option.

Dennis

['ol Pinion head]

Thanks for working on these Ken!
Will be in for half dozen '71 455 HO emission decals. Several '69 emission decals as well.

[Verdoro 68]

If anyone has a high res photo of a 455 HO decal drop me a line. I'm having trouble figuring out the finer details of that one via the low res pics in the forum.

[Verdoro 68]

Took a pass at refining the 455 HO label. As far as I can tell, some of the lines breaking up the info are thicker than others. I was bouncing between a couple different fonts for the tuning instructions, and I think I got it as close as I can. If someone has an original to compare to, happy to email a higher res version to print out. I also need a size for this label.

[Held for Ransom]

Crude dimensions are here...
https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...d.php?t=472074

[Verdoro 68]

Looks like I'm not the first person to go down this path! The pics in that thread are helpful, thanks. It appears my assumption about the line weight in the decal was wrong. I can tackle the '72 decal once I get this one nailed.

[SD455DJ]

Originally Posted by Verdoro 68

If anyone has a high res photo of a 455 HO decal drop me a line. I'm having trouble figuring out the finer details of that one via the low res pics in the forum.

Ken, PM me your email address and I can send the larger jpg file to you...if you need it still...

Dennis

[pggto]

Originally Posted by Verdoro 68

Took a pass at refining the 455 HO label. As far as I can tell, some of the lines breaking up the info are thicker than others. I was bouncing between a couple different fonts for the tuning instructions, and I think I got it as close as I can. If someone has an original to compare to, happy to email a higher res version to print out. I also need a size for this label.

I have one still on my car, if you would like a better picture I can get one next week sometime. It's not perfect but it might be good enough for some info.


Just curious, have you tried a hand held inkjet printer to see how it compares to the silk screen? I work for a company that makes labels and signs and we had one here in the shop for a project a while back. It will print jpegs if I'm not mistaken. I'll have to see where that printer ended up. I know I was playing with it and it would do color company logos.

[Verdoro 68]

Originally Posted by pggto

I have one still on my car, if you would like a better picture I can get one next week sometime. It's not perfect but it might be good enough for some info.

Dennis sent me one, thanks. My last rev was close, but not spot on. Found some differences in font shapes and such which I'm correcting by hand.

Originally Posted by pggto

Just curious, have you tried a hand held inkjet printer to see how it compares to the silk screen? I work for a company that makes labels and signs and we had one here in the shop for a project a while back. It will print jpegs if I'm not mistaken. I'll have to see where that printer ended up. I know I was playing with it and it would do color company logos.

Interesting, I've never heard of this. I'm keen to replicate the method the factory did which is why I went down the silkscreen path. It's also something that anyone could apply.

[SD455DJ]

Really looking good Ken!

Dennis

[Verdoro 68]

Got into the weeds on this one tonight. Thanks to Dennis for sending me a high res pic to work off of, it helped quite a bit. I ended up redrawing it at 4x the actual size to capture all the details and shrinking it down.

It turns out I had the wrong style periods (square vs. round) and I had to make a number of characters to match whatever the original font was. With the lower res pics, I was having a hard time figuring out what font weight the instruction list was. Much easier when I have a giant pic to work from. I had them too light in the previous iteration.

I was also able to tweak the illustrations so they had a heavier line weight and matched the original exactly.



Here's some of the process....

Draw on top of the pic of the original. It had a slight skew to it, but no big deal.



Convert everything to outlines so I can tweak the fonts and get the inconsistent spacing down.



Looking closely at the original, the fonts weren't super crisp. I could print them that way if folks prefer, but I also applied a slight rounding to all the fonts to mimic the sloppy original.

Digital fonts are crisp and clean:


Apply rounding to mimic the factory quality:



The end result. Still needs a little bit of tweaking to fix up the letter spacing and some of my custom letters in some spots, but it's way closer than what I had and keeps some of that wonky factory charm.

[dataway]

I like the more rounded font ... but it's got to be pain to individually alter each letter. Hopefully you have some kind of font tool you use to do them en masse.