Strongman and Strongman Bold by Richard M. Coda

Strongman and Strongman Bold are based on two old engraving fonts called Strongly 3 Line and Strongly 5 Line. The significance of the "Lines" is that the weight of the font was controlled by how many "lines" were used to draw it - the more lines, the bolder the font.

Strongman was scanned in directly from an old steel Panograph engraving plate. These are the masters that were used to create engraved dies for printing on engraving presses (this is the way it was done 100 years ago). From these dies fine engraved stationery was produced. Strongman was then produced using ZSoft's Publisher's TypeFoundry and SoftType.

Strongman Bold could have been done the same way but it is very time consuming (and a P.I.T.A!). And besides, the scanned images that result from these Panograph plates are horrible and require a great deal of cleaning up. I chose, however, to try CorelDraw for the bold version. I made a .WFN font out of Strongman and typed in the character set. Then I beefed it up with the pen tool. I tried converting this directly to a .WFN, but it didn't include the pen weight information, resulting in a clone of Strongman. So, I exported the file to a .PCX file and went through the entire process again. This time however, I didn't have to scan the plate in, and the resulting .PCX file was super clean. The straight letters were perfect. All letters with curves had to be touched up, but I created a master curve and popped it in where it was required. And that is the history of Strongman and Strongman Bold!

These fonts are good for display, legal stationery, or anything you might need and "old" feel for. A Corel .WFN version is included for each font.

These fonts are distributed as shareware. Feel free to distribute it to your friends with all 7 files intact (.TXT, .PFB, .PFM and .WFN). Please support the shareware concept. If you find that you have a use for these fonts, please remit $10.00 to:

Richard M. Coda
230 Irving Place
Lyndhurst, NJ 07071

I welcome any comments on this font, or typography in general. Mail comments to the above address, or send to CompuServe address 73700,2307.

Enjoy!

RMC