Tuesday 27 September 2011

Mike Hinge Fonts Put Into Practice

Alex Jay has come up trumps again after finding these proof of fonts that he was working on for a holiday ad for toys, two of the fonts are Mike Hinge designs, unfortunately the advert got cancelled.

"Gobots!" is the font Hinge Integrated. "Robo-Toys" is the font ITC Machine (not a Mike Hinge font). "Time Machines" is the font Hinge Computer in italic.

Another example of a Mike Hinge font in practice is a cover mock-up for THRUST, which wasn't published., the source of the image he doesn't recall the website but it was possibly eBay.

Seeing the THRUST logo jogged Alex's memory. 

Alex writes, "Mike designed an alphabet based on the logo; digital watches were proliferating and that triggered a need for fonts in that style. I don't recall the name of the font but Mike sold it to PLINC; there must be a contract or agreement in Mike's files. Mike showed a few letters from the alphabet to me; the letters were drawn in outline. Mike said PLINC told him to draw the alphabet in outline; if solid letters were needed, they could easily be filled in. I don't know if this font was ever published in a PLINC catalogue".




4 comments:

  1. Hi there I have just updated this post and made it much clearer that ITC Machine is not a Mike Hinge font. Thanks to Pinwiz and Kevin for bringing this to my attention.

    Incidentally some have had problems leaving comments on the blog sometimes blogspot is a bit quirky that way.

    Pinwiz emailed the following comment after having problems.

    That GOBOTS! logo is funky! Perhaps too funky for Gobots toys and the cartoon.
    ITC Machine, as myfonts says, "was created by the design team of Bonder and Carnase" and "was released in 1970", according to Adobe site. So it's not Hinge font, but got here because he used it along with his own fonts? I'd use it on cover of some hip-hop record.
    I wonder what was supposed to be sold as time machines.
    THRUST is Hinge at it's classic - electronics and pop. I was attracted by the way face is rendered - you barely see long curve here - outline looks like liquid.

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  2. I love the "Time Machines" font - sooooo simple and complex at the same time. Which really makes no sense, but I honestly have no words to express how intriguing the design is. Often fonts made for 'computer' type concepts can be cold or otherwise uninteresting. This one is endlessly fascinating....one can't take one's eyes off it as one tries to figure out the internal logic of the puzzle.

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  3. Thanks Cecilia
    Yes! The Hinge computer font is fantastic, agreed. I have had someone else say that to me recently as well. I do hope that PLINC are able to release this font and the others very soon.

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