Our first Font Play - Coolsville Regular

[Gare]

A little bit of a back-story on "Coolsville". It's actually Cooper, and the weight is alternately called "Black", and also "Fullface", rendered in 1924, and created by designer Oswald Cooper.

Oswald Bruce Cooper called Cooper Black a font "for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers". There are a lot of variations, many of them cast by Bitstream, but "Coolsville" is the classic Cooper.

I think I eschew using it in work because it's the second font anyone ever gets, the first being "Broadway."

And although the Packard Auto Company and Anheiser-Busch used his fonts, Cooper really is remembered by one product use, the one I've used in my submission.

[wizard509]

Very interesting Gare. If I might ask, where do you get that kind of information. I was just wondering so if I need to know sometime I'll know where to look. I would like to be as knowledgeable as you sometime.

[Gare]

Hi Larry—

1. I know the real name of that typeface. Quite seriously, when I joined a users group in town in 1991, Cooper Black was one of 11 typefaces I bought on a floppy disk for $10 at the meeting. A year later, Corel included it, so I'm well-aware of "Coolsville", and its original name.

2. I did a Google search using the key phrase "Who designed Cooper Black typeface?".

#. I looked up the design on wikipedia.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

I am not all that knowledgeable, Larry! 99% of the people who appear smart on forums just know how to conduct a good search online!

My Best,

Gary

[Rik]

Oh Dear!

By the time I finished drawing, things started to warm up a bit!

[mwenz]

Cooper got a bit overused in the early, so-called DTP era. I remember seeing it used on near-countless newsletters and brochures that came through the service bureau I worked for through the 1990s fixing files for them that originated on PCs.

Stylized, it hit several LP album covers, tie-dyed t-shirts, etc.

Here's my little play for the day--Thanks Frances

Take care, Mike

[Gare]

Nice take on Cooper Black, Mike!

There were two reasons why a PC file would break a Macintosh print job, weren't there?

1. The PostScript font was inexpertly crafted.

2. CorelDRAW was used to create the art.

CorelDRAW sometimes gets an undeserved bad rap for muxing up print jobs in the early 1990s, but this was largely due to a bureau absolutely insisting on specific parameters for the PostScript, and that Corel corporation originally was a print driver company, specializing in woodcutting and engraving and even embroidery rips, but not genuine PostScript.

-g-

[mwenz]

Yeah, and like today, files come from so many varied sources, some bureaus have gotten use to installing about every application under the sun to deal with original files.

I began my design business with CD 1.2 (and Professional Draw). I never had a failed PS file. Heck, I still have some on SyQuest drives somewhere, which is how the PS files were exchanged with the main printer I used (and fixed files for).

By 1992, font collections literally exploded. I still have a dozen of the 5.25 floppies from SWFTE, which I think was about the first commercially viable source I remember. But we all traded via BBS, dial-up modems. Ah, the memories. But as you mention, so many were really, really poorly crafted fonts. So PC work in general got a really bad wrap simply because it was such an open system compared to MACs that people could freely exchange things (no matter how they got them).

Anyway, thanks for the compliment. It was a fun diversion while the second pot of coffee was brewing. But, I owe, I owe, so off to work I go. Wait...what's that? My youngest just suggested I go with him and play a round of whack-a-ball (golf).

Take care, Mike
(who has obviously had enough coffee)