Broadway Copyist Font — [work]

To make a digital copyist font look authentic, print it on a laser printer, then scan it at 300dpi, then reduce it to 72dpi. This adds the "bloom"—the slight ink bleed—that makes the font look like a 1977 photocopy. (Yes, pit musicians can tell if you skip this step.)

In a standard printed font, a sharp sign (♯) has perfectly parallel vertical lines. In a copyist font, the sharp looks like a slightly drunken hashtag. The verticals are rarely parallel; the horizontals are thick wedges. This was faster to draw with a Rapidograph pen. broadway copyist font

The result was a revolutionary leap in reproducibility, but it came with a distinct that became the de facto "Broadway copyist font" of the era. The most famous typeface to emerge from this period was Sonata (designed by Cleo Huggins for the Musicwriter in 1956). To make a digital copyist font look authentic,