Datsun 240Z Font development!

[Larby]

Morning all!
So, partly so I can have my house name (Fairview) done in it, and partly for the wider good of the group, I've comissioned having a full font set based on the Datsun Fairlady 240Z logos made.
It's getting there (slowly), so I thought I'd put it to the wider group for feedback.

The lowercase and numbers I think I'd say are pretty spot on? Any comments on those?
The capitals, other than the ones which are a direct copy, I don't like at all yet. The Z in particular needs to be the 'Z' we all know and love!

The kerning (letter spacing) between the caps and lowercase is rubbish too, not sure how easily that can be resolved. May have to manually tuck the lowercase under the uppercase to get it right.

Once it's done, I'll pop the whole font files on here for all to enjoy, so you can write whatever you like in the awesome Fairlady font!

Cheers!

 

[Albrecht]

Bravo for your efforts, but I'm not sure what I think about reverse-engineering the emblems to come up with a workable font. My first thought is that - of course - there wasn't necessarily a full font to begin with...

The designers and stylists working on these cars were designing and styling emblems for them, and they already had the names 'Fairlady'/'Fairlady Z'/'240Z'/'432'/'Z' etc as their starting point. They knew what letters they were joining together and they needed to join them together in a way that looked good, could be manufactured in high pressure die cast tooling and/or plastic injection moulding, and then attached to a car. So isn't it true to say that their work was not typographic design in its pure sense? They only needed to create the font for the particular letters - and numbers - they were using.

I'm not any kind of expert on typography or the science of fonts (although I do remember being taught something around the subject of Font Psychology) so excuse me if this is obvious, but isn't this an exercise in (re)creating something that never existed in the first place?

Maybe I'm suffering from 'the shock of the new', but that upper case set is jarring to me.

Bravo all the same!

 

[Larby]

Yeah the uppercase set is equally jarring to me - it needs a lot of work. The lowercase I'm pretty happy with.

I totally agree with you that it was never a full font as such, just a designed logo. In my case, I wanted to be able to write 'Fairview' in the same 'font', as it's a nod to the Fairlady name.

I'd searched through and found a whole bunch of people asking if such a thing existed, with no answers, so figured I'd just go ahead and do it.

Probably more with the hybrid/moidified lot, I figured people may like to be able to create their own logo/sticker for whatever the build is, but in the same style.
Not one for the purists for sure, but hopefully someone will find it handy

 

[Fairlineguy]

Hope you crack it .I’ve got a use for it if you do

 

[Kest]

I tried tracking down a font last year actually as I was interested in making a playful 'fatass' or 'Dat-ass' sticker in the style of 'Datsun' for my 2+2. But it quickly became too much effort so I abandoned that fairly quickly.
When your font is ready I dare say I'll be reviving said project.