John Lennon's handwriting and drawings

A rip off of Goo Goo Gjoob.

And a bad one too!!

Those remarks are both cruel and unbecoming. Of course two fonts of John Lennon's handwriting are going to look similar. It doesn't mean that one is a ripoff of another.

Just because Letraset made a commercial font "inspired" by John Lennon's handwriting, and charges $40 for it, doesn't mean someone else can't use a similar source to make a free one of their own. It's based on someone's handwriting. Of course they're going to look alike!.

It would be a ripoff if the Goo Goo Gjoob font was modified to create a free one, but two different people can use the same "inspiration", and it isn't plagiarism just because someone did it first..

There are many documents available that contain Lennon's handwriting, and Analia's source is not necessarily Letraset's font.

I checked the metadata with Studio5, and there's no evidence that another font was modified to make Analia's, and it's not as if Goo Goo Gjoob is an original creation, conceived by Letraset.

There aren't all that many designers putting new fonts up here. That sort of reply doesn't really inspire others to do so.

You're right Bob. JohnLennon is not a clone of Goo Goo Gjoob. I was a bit too hasty. As there is no proper preview available I just compared the character preview of wtf with the enlarged preview here, and jumped into the conclusion that JohnLennon was a muddy copy of Goo Goo Gjoob and commented like that.

I should not have done that.

Triggered by your response I got Veer's pdf with the font embedded to compare it with the freebee. And, JohnLennon is indeed a thing on it's own and has little to nothing to do with Goo Goo Gloob.

As a starter, the lc p is completely different. I did not bother to check all glyphs. There was no need. After p, A, a and k it was clear. JohnLennon can't stand in the shade of Goo Goo Gjoob. Goo Goo Gjoob shows all the details of the irregularities of hand writing. JohnLennon is not what I said a bad rip-off, it is, I'm sorry to say so Analia, straight forward rubbish. Not a single detail is preserved. No wonder it looks like mud. It is mud.

So should this stop Analia or others from putting their work on here? No, of course not. But maybe keep the initial release for themselves and improve it before they make it public.

@Analia: you can prevent this muddy result by selecting None in the smooth filter when importing the bitmaps. It also helps when your bitmaps have a minimum of anti-aliasing.

The hard work is not in the rendering but in the preparation of each bitmap.

Those are the differences one would expect between a $40 commercial font and one done as a freeware font by an enthusiastic amateur.

I knew Luc Devroye would check that sort of thing out before making a homepage for Analia. If there's someone on the Internet who knows more about fonts than you, koeiekat, it would be Luc.

Not just Luc, Bob, many, MANY, know more than I do. But then, may I quote Shaw, I do not need to be able to lay eggs to know whether one is rotten, do I?

I've never had any direct correspondence with Analia. She posted on another message board that she had some fonts that she had made, and she would like to share them. If referred her to a number of sites that accept font submissions, including this one, and I also referred her to Luc Devroye, who set up a homepage for her on his site. I really like her dingbat font, but that has received no comments.

The John Lennon Normal font was made in August, 2006, so, if she's still making fonts, no doubt her skills have improved. I didn't even know Go Go Gjoob existed, because I don't go to myfonts. There's a good chance she didn't know about it, either.

I'm not a big fan of handwriting fonts, or of this font in particular, other than the dingbat characters, but I am a fan of anyone who makes fonts themselves, and choses to freely share them with others. Nothing kills enthusiasm more than lack of encouragement and unconstructive criticism.

I was very fortunate to have support and encouragement from Luc Devroye while I taught myself fontmaking, through trial and error. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, I try to help people make their fonts better, by letting them know which techniques will and will not work, because I had to find all of that out myself, the hard way.

I've had a steep learning curve since my first disasterous attempt at making a font myself in August, 2007, and I'm always looking for new ways to make more complex fonts, while staying within the memory limits of my fontmaking software. I've had a lot of downloads recently, over 12,000 in the last 2½ weeks, but very little feedback, including no comments here, other than my own notations.

Letraset no doubt uses a program much more sophisticated than ScanFont, but I'm limited to ScanFont because it's the only one I have that lets me import monochrome bitmaps directly. Analia uses something from Font Logic, but I'm not sure what.

I can't justify paying hundreds of dollars to buy a better program, just so I might be able to make my freeware fonts look a little bit better. I do the best I can, and I'm sure that's what Analia did, as well. I've seen other fonts on this site that weren't any better, but they weren't singled out for negative comments.

Bob, Analia uses (used) Font Creator v5 - www.high-logic.com - a program though not as sophisticated as the top-of-the-bill programs, is perfectly capable to render good glyphs. That is, if you get the settings right and your bitmaps are of good quality. But that, and specially the last, goes for any font maker program. So we are not talking about the lack of quality of design of a font, we are talking about the lack of quality of the rendering of the glyphs as a result of using a 'tool' without trying to understand it's function.

And, yes, you are right, Bob. What would The Kat know about typography? A Kat doesn't know about typography. A Kat can not know about typography. Right?

But then, who is The Kat?

Hello, somehow I had this font saved in my 'commercial fonts' folder.

I am trying to get in touch with Analia to see if i can just pay her a fee rather than redo all my artwork that has been done using the font

in relation to is it commercial or personal use...

nothing i have used the font for has been sold..

however i use the font on my photography website in my banners and such,

so i need to clarify with the author how i can purchase commercail licence or licence that allows

SKy

sky@duranphotography.com.au

tried emailing this person about a commercial licence but no website