Frequently-asked questions

Can I use NBP Collection fonts in my commercial project?

Yes. All fonts in the NBP Collection are free for commercial use. Some of the older ones (notably "Dilithium Pixels") have BY-NC or BY-NC-SA licenses, but I'm not particularly concerned with their being used commercially at this point.
To be clear, commercial projects include, but are not limited to:

• Games
• Advertising
• Signage
• Corporate identity
• Film/Television
• Books
• Teeshirts
• Posters
• Cover art (books, records, videogames, etc.)
• Non-profit ventures (yearbooks, playbills, programs, pamphlets, etc.)

Can I include NBP Collection fonts in a "50 Great Fonts"-like CD-ROM or digital compilation?

No.


Can I hire you to edit an existing typeface or design a new one?

No, sorry. I'm rather busy at the moment and could scarcely find the time to make this post.


Can I edit one of your fonts?

Yes, as long as you comply with the terms of the Creative Commons (CC BY-SA) Attribution ShareAlike license.


Can I donate to your cause?

Yes! Total FontGeek now has a PayPal account, to which you can donate from Here (just FYI, Jeffrey Perry and Nate Halley are the same person :) )

Website overhaul halted

If you've been to the website recently, you've probably noticed a lack of information there. I was planning to overhaul the website and turn total FontGeek DTF into a professional design-for-hire firm, but those plans have been changed.

This fall, I'll be going to school to become an English teacher and, as such, I won't have any opportunity to design new typefaces or alter existing designs at all for the foreseeable future.

With that, total FontGeek Digital Type Foundry, Ltd. is now closed. Any additional questions regarding licensing can be directed to perjys547@gmail.com

Duty now for the future,
Nathaniel L. Halley

Typography as satire

I like a keenly-crafted satire. I also like typography. So, when I came to the realisation that I have most (like 90%) of the typefaces used by the logos of corporate america, I decided to put them to good use and make them into satirical, yet honest, slogans. I have to admit, this isn't a new idea... there's a tumblelog called, oddly enough, Honest Slogans that specialises in this type of thing, but I gave it a go anyway. Here's what I came up with.

Abandoned NBP typeface designs

Now that TFG is on indefinite hiatus, I should mention that there were a few fonts in development that will probably never see the light of day. Some of these I designed between the announcement and the release of CasaleFinale, but most were failed experiments or ideas from earlier in TFG's history.

"Unicase"
An unnamed unicase handwriting font. The letterforms are similar to Economica and Bodega Sans with hints of Univers UC in places. Essentially JustAnotherDay v.2.

Halley Script 2
Using the same pen as HalleyScriptThin (which wasn't really all that thin, was it?) I drew the alphabet again with a 7th-grader's level of handwriting.

Centurion
Designed for a cancelled project at one of the defunct animation studios around here (that's why the project was cancelled--they went out of business) Centurion is a large pixel font inspired by the Sinclair ZX Spectrum with a hint of MS System. Monospaced. It would have supported ASCII, the basic Latin accents, Greek, and Cyrillic. I finished enough of it that it's usable and I could release it if I wanted to. But right now, it's my Notepad and BASIC editor font. Maybe someday...

Klassiq Strangular
A redraw of NBP Klassiq using hexagonal letterforms. The word "Strangular" was a result of the Haagen-Dazs Method.

SooBawlz Pro
After Mike Pilmer used SooBawlz NBP on the Devo NHM teeshirt, I noticed several glaring problems with the design that I meant to correct but never got round to. SooBawlz Pro would have had 2 weights--Solid and Outline--with lowercase letters and all the SooBawlz design problems fixed. I gave serious consideration to charging money for this font, but in the end all I could think of was "Why?"

"Pixel 7"
I shelved this one fairly early on. Eventually, it came down to releasing this font or (I think) Mercutio NBP. Mercutio won. Design-wise, it's basically another Univers/Arial/Helvetica pixel combo, with elements of each. I chose Mercutio over this one because it was simply too large to be easily legible.

ErbosDraco 3
Less of something that I would have released and more of an experiment. ErbosDraco 3 is a straight facsimile of that popular bitmap font for cheap LCD screens (calculators, road signs, scrolling shop signage, that sort of thing).

Guidewire
A failed attempt to recreate Skyhook Mono in Fontstruct. Too much would have needed postpro editing in Type, so I gave it up.

"Serifs"
A hand-drawn serif font. I wrote like normal, then added serifs to everything.

"Dinglebats"
An experimental hand-drawn dingbat font. I drew old Letraset icons and some stuff from Wingdings and Webdings--this was with MyScriptFont, so it probably wouldn't have turned out usable if I'd scanned it.

CasaleFinale Small Caps
Just as it sounds--CasaleFinale with small caps in place of lowercases. I was using the uppercases from CasaleTwo as the small caps, but decided that anyone with Microsoft Word can make the same effect.

CasaleFinale Micro
I had been considering a grand send-off for the Casale redraw and my descent into obscurity, but didn't do that for some reason. Anyway, CasaleFinale Micro would have been a pixel font based on CasaleFinale.

"Love Letter Hand"
A really stupid idea by all accounts. I don't do "swashy" very well, but this font sure has enough swashes for the entire NBP collection, had I been dumb enough to release it. The first 1-star rating would have been from me, that's for sure. Okay--imagine a design combo of Hermann Zapf, Kimberly Geswein, and Salvador Dali or someone. Wasted a perfectly good leaf of paper, that did.

"Statue Park"
I printed out a MyScriptFont template and gave it to my mum. I said, "here, fill this in and I'll make a font from your handwriting". I guess I forgot to mention that the template had boundary lines. It was my mum's handwriting, just all over the paper and through several boundary boxes. The name? Inside joke. Get your own.

Spectrum
A font inspired by the Tempest drum machine logotype.

GlitchGirl
An octagonal uppercases-only font similar to Cinema Gothic (if a bit more angular). It has full QWERTY support, but nothing else. I had planned at least the basic Latin accents and a few symbols, but something distracted me.

GlitchBoy
I was going to release this one! I even made a type specimen in the Fontstruct UI and everything... but then Fontstruct decided to corrupt the saved file and it was lost. I wanted to release GlitchBoy and GlitchGirl in the same set, but with GlitchBoy gone, that became a non-issue. Design-wise, it's like Grishenko Novoye, but less severe-looking. It was a small font to begin with--I think the widest character was only 6 tiles wide (probably M or W). I liked this one... oh well.

Smart Patrol Display
Another attempt to give smoothed lines to Smart Patrol NBP (after Schutzgitterhaus-Grotesk).

Cellblock Narrow/Text/UC
A suite of typefaces based on Cellblock NBP. Narrow and UC (ultra-compressed) would have been narrow weights for limited space in heading lines. Text would have been suitable for reading.

Fairlight
Long ago, I designed the UI and sound samples for a Nintendo DSiWare drum machine app that I could never find anyone to make. Fairlight was meant to be the logotype and heading font for that programme. It's a unicase font that somewhat resembles Wide Awake by pizzadude.dk. It has full QWERTY support and an alternate alphabet and number set in the Fullwidth block. Also, in an unusual design move for me, it has a real live actual copyright symbol.

Meyer Serif
I thought Meyer Gothic and Meyer Unicase turned out rather nicely. Unfortunately, no one else did. Meyer Serif would have been the 3rd font in the series.

Whatevs
I threw practicality to the wind with this design and drew each of the letters in a different style. I only had enough creativity for the uppercase set, however. There are characters that look like pixel fonts, characters that look like stick figures, characters in grids, on microchips, twisted, half-smooth/half-pixelly--whatevs. Fontstruct as a Moleskine journal.

"Mario 64"
I tried using Fontstruct to make the lettering from Super Mario 64's message boxes. But then I found a website where someone else had done it, so I just downloaded theirs and shelved mine.

CasaleFinale is done -- so is TFG

I decided that "CasaleFinale" was a better name because it rhymes that way. Like I said, it's my 3rd and final draw of my first typeface, Casale NBP. I think the metrics are a bit nearer to the cover of Shout. It has full ASCII support as well as some accented Latin (everything you need for Spanish, French, German, and that lot) Greek and Cyrillic.

And with that, total FontGeek Digital Type Foundry is officially on hiatus.

If I ever decide to start it back up again, I would prefer a better platform than Fontspace. The rating system is massively fucked up from all the trolls who spend their day watching new fonts come in and then rating them as low as possible. While it may be all fun and games to them, if you happen to stumble across Fontspace as a designer looking for a decent font, you're probably going to immediately put out of your mind anything that has less than 3 stars. That's representative of 87% of my own work, to say nothing of all the hobbyists who get scared away or convinced their work is rubbish by 4 trolls clicking BAD all at once.

Oh well. Anyway, I would welcome suggestions on where else I could release new material and re-post some of the old stuff.

"Until we meet again, this is General Boy for DEVO, INC. Duty now for the future!"

--General Boy

And now, a public service announcement

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing I like better than to see one of my designs in public, and BrightonTwo is one of my most popular typefaces (behind ErbosDraco)

That having been said, one of the most recent public encounters I had with an NBP font was on a teeshirt where it was being used to render a very sexist motto. I'm not going to mention what it was or where I found it because, as I've recently come to find out through Tumblr, there are Jack Thompson-types who will assign blame to anyone they can find. I don't need them demanding a boycott of total FontGeek DTF just because some pseudohuman used one of my fonts on a bad shirt.

Obviously, I can't control how any of my designs are used. That's the nature of "free"--free to download, free to use, free to display. I would ask, though, that you use them responsibly. Don't be that guy. If you're going to be that guy, use Comic Sans.

And now, a disclaimer:
total FontGeek Digital Type Foundry, Ltd. (“TFG”) is not responsible for any messages which are rendered in its designs, beyond the official typeface specimens and design examples made by TFG staff. All fonts made by TFG are free for commercial use and TFG is not, as a general rule, informed about the public display of any of its designs, nor does it have any control over how the design is used. TFG cannot be held responsible for any offence taken by an individual or group over the content of messages rendered in TFG-designed typefaces and will not make any attempt to stifle the creative freedoms of any graphic designer who uses them.
While not explicitly implied in the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 3.0 unported license used by TFG for its designs, the disconnect between foundry and third-party designer is, in our judgement, necessary to encourage free creativity and will not be reconsidered.

CasaleThree, TFG's final project for a long while

I discovered to much to my abject horror that CasaleTwo is too short! I don't know why I didn't notice it sooner, like maybe when I made CasaleTwo, but the entire typeface is 2 fontstruct tiles too short. So, guess what--time to make it AGAIN!
Yeah cool whatever. "Shout" is still my favo Devo album so I owe it to them to make the font as close as I can to the original logotype.

Anyway, I know I've threatened to stop the NBP collection before and then suddenly I made 10 more fonts, but I'm serious this time. I haven't made a new font since around August, about the same time I posted the last entry here. I've been caught up in other things lately and typography has sort of fallen below the radar. Instead of saying definitively that I'm closing total FontGeek Digital Type Foundry, I'll just say that it's going on indefinite hiatus.
I still get ideas every now and then, but there's "idea" and there's "spend 4 hours on Fontstruct".
So, just in case I never get back to TFG, CasaleThree is going to be a worthy stopping point. Since there's Cyrillic in Casale One, there's going to be cyrillic in CasaleThree-- also accented Latin and possibly greek. I decided to stop making Hiragana and Katakana after a Japanese typography site called one of my fonts "hard to read". I just don't know enough about the letterforms to make it legible.

I guess I should talk about why I'm not doing fonts right now.
First, I got a new job recently-- one of those 8-5 types as a receptionist. It's not all phones all the time-- I do the occasional mail-run and I take the bins to the rubbish and recycling. Basically your standard-issue office grunt.
Next is that Tumblr has absorbed my life like a sponge. I'm managing 3 blogs at the moment and none of them are about typography.
Finally, no one is making any new and compelling fonts anymore. The nearest I've gotten to being excited about using a font was with Fira Sans, the new Mozilla font. Erik Spiekermann, designer of Officina, Meta, and Unit, among others, made that one. On Fontspace, all that's showing up anymore are handwriting fonts and the occasional Fontstruct-build minimalist piece. Not to malign the designers of those fonts, but after sifting through 47 screens of nothing but barely-legible script typefaces, one gets rather bored.

I'll try to make something before CasaleThree, just to say I've done it, but after that... no more. Not for a while anyway.

New FontGeek resources: PaintFont & FontPunk

The developers of MyScriptFont have branched out into a couple new ventures.

PaintFont is sort of MyScriptFont on steroids-- several improvements here. First is the printable template: instead of the same template for each project (which was noticeably lacking in a few important punctuation marks) it's now customisable by character set. You specify what language you're planning to type in and it adds the necessary characters to the template. You can also manually add characters to the template by pressing keys on your keyboard. When you're done adding characters, print the template and start drawing.
Another noticeable difference with the template is that the cells are larger with marks for the cap height, baseline, and descent. The larger cells mean less distortion when the server-side application generates the font, plus the obvious physical space factor which allows you to draw more complex lettering or dingbats.
The quality of the generated font has also gone up. MSF had a tendency to run strokes together if they were too close. In comparison, my pen was running short of ink when I filled in the PaintFont template and the imperfections in the strokes showed right up in the final product! Also notable is the auto-correcting feature-- if you accidentally mark outside the boundary box or if your printer didn't print the template straight on and everything has a bit of a slant to it, the generator fixes the problems automatically. Gone are the days of having to edit baselines in Type!
One problem I've found is that the website's tutorial page gives you the wrong information in regards to scanner resolution. It suggests 300 dpi, but none of the templates I scanned at that resolution were able to be read by the generator. As soon as I put it up to 400 dpi, that corrected the problem. In terms of what format to scan to, I've had good results with PDF. MyScriptFont wouldn't even look at PDFs, so that's a saved step if your scanner only outputs to that format. No more converting.

Next is a tool called FontPunk. Basically what it is is an effects generator. It doesn't make new designs, it only alters existing ones. It has a number of features to make fonts more flashy, such as outlines and shadows; or more practical, such as line thickness and slanting. However, it has no way of differentiating between fonts you make yourself and fonts by a professional type foundry, meaning that every effect it can apply to your own font, it can apply to any other font on your computer. Purely in the name of scientific research, I was able to make an italicised version of Inspira Small Caps with this tool. So, it's on the honour system-- whether you observe it or not is up to you. Either way, it's another fine tool to add to the list of FontGeek resources.

SooBawlz NBP is now total de-vo!

Not as in "it's the Total Devo logotype" (which kinda looks like Balloon LET) but as in... well, this!

Devo recently performed a concert at the Natural History Museum in LA. Naturally, they needed an event-specific teeshirt for it. Whenever I make a Devo-inspired font, I always tell their graphic designer, Michael Pilmer (aka DEVO-OBSESSO) about it, mostly because he is a fellow FontGeek (his website led me to IBM Orator, a monospaced font I didn't know about before and that I use alot now) Here's the story. Michael says,
"The museum asked me to use a 'funky' font on the shirt. I couldn't think of anything funkier than the Hardcore DEVO font!"
I still have several more Devo-inspired fonts and more designs where devolutionary sentiments render nicely.

Ever since Depeche Mode's designer used ErbosDraco on their Countdown website, I've been aware that people actually USE my fonts, something I'm still not quite used to.... before Fontstruct I would make things with the knowledge that no one would ever even see it. Even though I feel very honoured to be a contributor to my favourite band in history, I think my ultimate contribution to typography will be when I see one of my pixel fonts on an electronic sign. I can stop making fonts after that because I won't be able to do anymore for typography.
Oh, and here's the other sleeve.

 SooBawlz is available now on FontSpace.

My favourite NBP fonts

Since I've already pointed out the NBP fonts I wish I could delete, let's try this now. Here are the NBP fonts that I think turned out rather nicely.

CasaleTwo
This one's obviously at the top of the list because it's a better version of the Shout font. Shout is still my #1 Devo album. Plus, I like how the letterforms are all in perfect proportion with each other.

Plutonium
This design was inspired by Skyhook Mono (free from Fontsquirrel) It's basically Skyhook-on-Fontstruct. I was seeing how much of it I could make. It's an incomplete characterset that's likely to remain incomplete, but I still like it for headings. It's got all the basic punctuation and numbers anyway, so that's good.

FortySeven Micro
Maybe because it's my 47th design (well 48th actually, since it came after FortySeven) but this one's my favourite of all my pixel fonts. It's really too bad people don't use pixel fonts much anymore because it would be perfectly suited for menu text on Nintendo DSi or 3DS.

Skyline Beach
This is like the best parts of Russell Square combined with Ubuntu and a bit of Arial added for good measure. The banner art on Fontspace shows it being used on a SketchUp-built signboard because I honestly think it would work famously for extreme-scale graphic design or signage. There's also art there that shows it on the opposite extreme, at pixel font size. Since I didn't use any half-blocks in Fontstruct to make Skyline, it could be used for small displays just as well as large ones.

Grishenko Novoye
I don't know why I didn't just make Grishenko unicase to begin with. It totally looks better that way. I mean, with the correct application of ALteRNaTInG CaPs, you can make it unicase but Grishenko Novoye does it for you. I'll admit that look is sort of becoming a bit dated now, but I don't really care. I'll stay with a design trend until I tire of it and I'm not tired of unicase just yet.

Mindfuct
Same reasoning here. It's like Spire and Grishenko Novoye got married and had a son who turned into a spiteful anarchistic teenage rebel. Anyway, I'm sure that the Bopomofo characters don't look a thing like Bopomofo should, but the thought of being able to spell "mindfuck" (check spelling) in Chinese was quite appealing to me at the time.

AWODEX: Absent without a decent excuse

I haven't been doing much FontGeekage lately. Mostly we can blame Tumblr for this. I discovered recently that Tumblr is a much more exciting place than Fontspace or Fontstruct. Not only are there fellow FontGeeks there but representatives of all my other interests too. Poetry, visual art, stickfigures, Devo, that kind of thing. Beyond that, I've been busy making my Fantom X sound like a Fairlight CMI rhythm sequencer. So I guess I've been busy with other things is what I'm trying to say. Just to show that I haven't totally abandoned typography, here is some of the type-related stuff I've been posting to Tumblr.

Too bad Fontspace hasn't got a DELETE button

If Fontspace had an option to delete things, I would dispose of these fonts quicker than you could say "waste of bandwidth".

Casale
This was my very first design. And it shows. CasaleTwo is the better version of the Shout font, besides you can't even type DEVO properly in Casale 1. A few of the lowercases border on the illegible.


Dilithium Pixels
The idea behind this one was a pixel font based on the Star Trek logotype that would work on the Super NES. Of course, no one makes Super NES games anymore (they haven't for about 15 years at this point) I never had much of a use for this font personally and it was the first one of mine that I uninstalled.

One Time
I was running out of ideas. So I turned off ClearType and typed the alphabet into Wordpad with 12pt Trebuchet italic. What I saw, I put into Fontstruct but I altered a few things to make it not exactly like pixel Trebuchet. I don't remember why I chose that font or why I even bothered saving it when I was through, but I don't have the least idea what anyone could ever do with it.


Sharp Objects
Another font made by a Fontstruct n00b. I was too lazy to make lowercases or numbers, so I made roman numerals, which of course you can't properly render numbers in.


Basil Gothic
As a pixel font, Basil Gothic works fine. 12 point size only. Anything above that just looks wrong somehow. Schutzgitterhaus-Grotesk showed me that the 45 degree angles in Fontstruct aren't the same width as the vertical and horizontal lines. I guess I forgot or disregarded that fact when I made Basil Gothic. It's not a very good heading font anyway. I'm disappointed that I named such a bad font after such a talented performer.

Brighton
It's not necessary anymore. BrightonTwo is better. Of course, there couldn't be a BrightonTwo without a Brighton 1 I guess.

Grishenko
Same reason as above. It's not needed anymore.

Meyer Gothic
Yes this is the one I just made. It's got the same problems as Basil Gothic really.

Sebastian Gothic
This was the result of Schutzgitterhausifying Guru Meditation (just like how I added slants to Smart Patrol and made Schutzgitterhaus-Grotesk).

Erbos Draco
I made this without doing any research first. Apparently, I managed to make a type design that is almost the exact same character height and width as FF Call One. If type designs weren't inherently uncopyrightable in the US, I'm sure I'd have heard from FontFont about copyright infringement by now. Somehow it's managed to be my most popular design. WHY? Please to be answering that question! What are you people using it for, anyway?! What's Erbos Draco got that BrightonTwo hasn't? Or Grishenko Novoye? Je ne comprends pas.

And finally, the most depraved fonts I've ever made...

Recombo Round & Square
More n00bism. If I ever saw Recombo on a sign someplace, I'd hit the designer with a magazine and say, "Dude seriously. Just use Comic Sans. It looks better."

Arial: Just a cheap knock-off?

Alot of professional FontGeeks are split between Helvetica and Arial. Some who use Helvetica claim that Arial was just a cheap knock-off. Some who use Arial claim that Helvetica has a dated look and is dying a slow death.

Have you ever heard of Monotype Grotesque? Probably not. It's like Akzidenz-Grotesk-- it just kinda faded away for some reason. It was made by Frank Hinman Pierpoint in 1926 for Monotype Corporation. In 1982, Monotype was supplying IBM with bitmap fonts for a line of computer printers-- one of them used Helvetica which MT licensed from Linotype and the other used Arial (called "Sonoran Sans" at the time) which was made specifically for the project by a 10-person team at MT and used Monotype Gothic as a basis.
In 1990, Arial as we know it was made into TTF and licensed to Microsoft.
Really, it's Microsoft's fault. They called Arial "an alternative to Helvetica". If they hadn't said that then no one probably would have thought to compare them. By a co-incidence of universal proportions, Arial's TTF outline managed to almost match Helvetica's character height and width. No one at MT planned that or said "Let's mutate Helvetica!" They say that there's no such thing as a truly random occurrance but this really was.
So now it's just like everything else. You're either Sony or Nintendo. Pepsi or Coke. Burger King or McDonalds. Mac or Windows. Arial or Helvetica.

Even so, alot of computers have both typefaces. Mine does. All Mac OS Xs are. IMO both Arial and Helvetica are overused. Fortunately, Microsoft made the solution in 1997.

Microsoft Sans Serif is the perfect midline between Helvetica and Arial. It has similar features to both, but still enough new designs to make it interesting. The lowercase a manages to accomplish what neither of the older types could. So does the uppercase R. It's 100% computerised. No personality of any kind. Bland enough to work famously with any heading font.

Here's an interesting TFG factoid: Since Microsoft licensed MS Sans Serif to Apple, there no longer are any Windows-exclusive non-bitmap typefaces. (incorrect: Windows 8 introduced several non-Latin designs that are not available on Mac)

So, is Arial a cheap knock-off? No more so than Comic Sans is a cheap knock-off of One Stroke Script.

Top 10 Worst Applications for Comic Sans

10. Warning signs (e.g. Beware of Dog, No Trespassing)
9. Body text in a science textbook
8. Headings for the 3rd-quarter analysis spreadsheets
7. PowerPoint presentations about the Higgs boson
6. Stern memos about unnecessary font usage
5. Rejection letters to job applicants
4. Funeral announcements/obituaries
3. Newspaper headlines
2. State welfare agency logotype
1. Printed text on traffic citations

Top 10 Best Applications for Comic Sans
10. Game text in The Sims Classic
9. Er...
8. Well, there's...
7. Um...
6. Let's see now...
5. Ah...
4. Eh...
3. Hmm...
2. Uh...
1. Could you repeat the question please?

Why Swansea, Mytupi, and Helvetica can co-exist

You see it all the time. There's a Monotype version of Helvetica and a Linotype version. There's a URW version of Balloon and a Letraset version. There's a Monotype version of Trade Gothic and a Bitstream version. Why is this? It never looks like anything's been changed. If it has, it's so infinitessimal that you can't tell the difference without computer software. In the United States (a.k.a Planet Earth's ministry for de-evolution) there is a little blurb in the Copyright act that makes font liberation possible.

In a computer display font, only the source code can be protected under US copyright laws. The abstract letterforms are uncopyrightable.

Even though the entire institution of copyright is in serious need of a major revision, there are still little places like that where people can snake through the chaos.
In effect (if I had the right software) I could copy the letterforms from GE Inspira into a seperate TTF file, call it something (like maybe "EcoLogic NBP") and then I could release it into the public domain. Depending on how many boobytraps GE comissioned, I might have to redraw the entire typeface. But the point is that unless the monkeymen in business suits are hell-bent on proving that "EcoLogic NBP" is an infringement on Inspira's copyright.... more likely than anything is that it would just slip by unnoticed and work its way into publishing houses all across america as a free and highly legible typeface.

The Sims fonts: a semi-complete list

A couple days after I started the blog up in June I talked about The Sims fonts a little bit. My list of Sims fonts was kind of sparse at the time but now I'm almost finished. A few of the Sims 2 and Sims 3 boxart logotypes are escaping me at the moment but I'll add to this list as I find stuff.

The Sims Classic
Comic Sans: Game text (PC)
One Stroke Script: Game text (GCN/PS2/Xbox)
Bodega Sans: Base game and House Party display box text
Kabel (modified): House Party logotype, On Holiday display box text
Futura: House Party display box text
Chalet London 1970: Hot Date logotype, display box headings (w/ Helvetica)
Avant Garde Gothic (modified): Superstar logotype
Trade Gothic Condensed: Superstar and Makin' Magic/Spellbound display box text
Brush Script: Unleashed display box heading text
Interstate: Unleashed display box main text

The Sims: Bustin' Out
Frankfurter Medium: Game text (GCN/PS2/Xbox)
Comic Sans: (a proprietary bitmap font based on it) Game text (GBA/NGE)
Gill Sans: Bustin' Out logotype, display box text
Futura: Instruction booklet main text
SimDialogue: instruction book heading text

The Urbz: Sims in the City
Franklin Gothic: Game heading text (GCN/PS2/Xbox)
Gothic 720: Game main text (GCN/PS2/Xbox)
Proprietary bitmap font: Game text (GBA/DS --- use Glasstown as a substitute! -_~)
Kabel (stylised): The Urbz logotype, instruction booklet subheading text
Gill Sans Condensed: Instruction booklet main text

The Sims 2
Benguiat Gothic Bold: Game heading text (PC) All game text (GCN/PS2/PSP)
Helvetica Neue: Game main text
Proprietary bitmap font: Game text (DS/GBA --- use Zarbville as a substitute -_~)
Russell Square: Base game display box heading text
Arial: Base game display box main text
Triplex Sans: Expansion pack display box main text
Helvetica Extended: Expansion Pack subtitle
Kabel: University logotype
Aspirin (modified or combined with Imaginer): Nightlife logotype
Helvetica Extended, House Brush, House Slant: Open for Business logotype
American Typewriter Bold: Pets logotype (all platforms)
Coop Heavy: Seasons logotype
Gotham Book Bold: Bon Voyage logotype
Unidentified font: FreeTime logotype (probably made by Emigre or House Industries)
Ed Interlock: Apartment Life logotype (A and L from Ed Gothic)
Gill Sans: 100 Million Sold logotype
Univers: Instruction booklet main text (all instruction book headings are the same as their expansion pack's logotype)

MySims
Helvetica Rounded: Game text
Kabel: Display box text, instruction booklet heading text
Franklin Gothic Condensed: Instruction booklet main text

I'm still working on the list of The Sims 3 fonts. Some of them are obvious (like Generations, which is Times New Roman (or it might could be Dante even) and the Russian Ambitions logotype which is Arial.... says something about Sims Division's creativity these days doesn't it? -__-) others are not so obvious though. Fortunately for maniacal typography archivists like myself >:D EA tends to use fonts from California-based digital type foundries like Emigre and House Industries for their playful fonts.
Without saying too much about EA's business practises (not a Sensible Human in the lot of them) I am looking forward to seeing what they select as the new SimCity game fonts.

Fonts similar to Klavika

Edited 25 May 2013
 
I don't know about you but I think Klavika is a stylish display font! It definitely makes #5 on my top 10 list of display fonts. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any fellow FG/CLs who have it. I might have to buy the suite and CL it myself actually. Until then though, there are a few types that can do in place of Klavika.

The first is Neo Sans. It's what I've been using primarily as a Klavika substitute mostly because it has so many weights. Light, Bold, Black, and Ultra. I like Neo Sans Bold especially :) It's like #2 behind Ubuntu Bold. And talking of...

Ubuntu is also very similar. Plus the best thing about it.... it's free! Compared to Neo Sans which costs 54 quid/individual TTF on MyFonts. The best things in life are free right? :P

Aller is another free one from Dalton Maag (maker of Ubuntu). It and Klavika both have a double-storey lower "g" but some of Aller's vertical strokes don't connect (i.e. R K and X -- Klavika's K doesn't connect either).

Ruda has quite a few similarities to Klavika and might even be indistinguishable in a few applications. It's the nearest free substitute that I've found so far.

If you're not doing a serious logotyping design or you want to make fun of Facebook or something then Banksia is a decent Klavika-like typeface. I think it's sort of like a Cachet/Skia hybrid.

Cuprum is a bit narrower and more humanist than Klavika, but it does contain a few of the same design elements. It kinda makes you wish there were a Klavika Narrow, doesn't it? And talking of...

Economica is like the Klavika Narrow that never was. Actually, even if there were one, this free typeface by Vicente Lamónaca would probably work a little better. It's a little narrow for main text, but it works famously for section headings.

Erbos Draco goes viral!

This is a screenshot of http://countdown.depechemode.com. It clearly shows the use of Erbos Draco Open NBP! Cool! I'ma have to listen to them now.... I think they did some Simlish stuff for The Sims 2.
So even though this is only the second time I've ever seen one of the fonts I made in use... they used the OLD VERSION! Like last week sometime I redrew a few characters in the Erbos Draco family to make it less similar to other LED screen styled types on Fontspace (like LED Phone and TPF Display). Plus, I drove past a real actual LED sign that had been there for years that had the exact same upper G as Erbos Draco has. So that's why I messed with it. Then, someone points out to me that Depeche Mode is using v.1.0 (version ONE-point-freakin-ZERO!) @_@ So I decided that, since its being used now, I'd bring back ED Open and ED Regular from the old version. And I did. Because I'm a nice guy :)
Well anyway, it's cool that somebody out of the 2100+ people who've downloaded it decided it was nice enough to use for something. 

So what exactly is DIFFERENT about Erbos Draco from other LED types on Fontspace?
For one thing, there are symbols and lowercase letters. The lower letters don't go below the baseline (because there isn't a "below the baseline" on a scoreboard display). Most other uppercase Rs look like Arial or Interstate. ED's looks more like Univers or Helvetica. The 7 is based on Akzidenz-Grotesk.

You can o/c download Erbos Draco from Fontspace.
http://www.fontspace.com/total-fontgeek/erbos-draco-monospaced-nbp

Oh FYI. The name "Erbos Draco" has nothing to do with dragons. It's an anagram of "score board" ;)
Let's hear it for pixely LED styled typefaces!

BTW I had an interview today for a graphic design position at a local advertising agency so you might see alot more typefaces of mine showing up in places!

Fonts similar to GE Inspira

I can't speak to whether it was someone actually looking for it or just a random spider search but one of the things someone searched for on google was "fonts similar to ge inspira". They found this blog probably because I talk about it so much (probably not :P whatevs). I don't actually have a list of fonts that are similar to Inspira on here. So to combat this problem.... let's fix that.

Anyway, there are quite a few types which are passably similar to Inspira (that is if you don't want to go to ufonts.com and download GE Inspira directly).

First is VAG Round. This is the closest one because it was the inspiration behind Inspira. It was the old Volkswagen logotype from like the 70s.

Next up is Futura Rounded. It's virtually impossible to tell Futura Round from VAG Round (though there ARE differences--- like Arial and Helvetica).

Talking of--- the next one is Helvetica Rounded. BTW it's also the primary text in The Sims 3. But of course, if you're on a PC and not a mac, then you probably don't have Helvetica and can't get it without severing your leg please sir.

In that case you probably have Arial Rounded (it's probably in the list as "Arial Rounded MT Bold"). Basically any font with "Rounded" in the name is going to be similar to Inspira. But these are all expensive fonts. Aren't there any free ones?

Ubuntu Titling is free.Not to be confused with "Ubuntu Title" which has no uppercase letters.

Alternatively there's Ubuntu Regular (just called "Ubuntu") which is my personal fave. It's not rounded but it kinda works out.
You could also look on Fontspace. There are quite a few there that would work as an Inspira substitute as well. Such as BPreplay, RockoFLF, and Jolly. Except in this case, not all the fonts you find will be licensed for commercial use (say, if you wanted to use it in a commercial spot or on a magazine advert or something). Jolly is not a commercial font. The other two are however.
Of course, like I said at the outset---

GE Inspira itself is available on ufonts.com. At least THAT hasn't been taken away yet.

SimCity and The Sims fonts

For The Sims Fonts ONLY, click here for a more comprehensive list.

Right now, I'm trying to make a list of all typefaces ever used in the Sim series (from SimCity to SimAnt all the way to The Sims Social). But there are WAY more than I ever thought possible! I'm not even halfway through yet! Of course, I'm trying to find the ones they used on the packages, the instruction manuals,and in adverts as well as the game text. But if you searched for "the sims font" on Google and found this entry, you probably only want to know the game text, which I can tell you about. THAT part of the list IS finished. Mostly. Here's what I have so far.

Oh, incidentally--- the SimCity 2000 logo is in Newport Classic ("SIM") and Industria ("CITY 2000")

SimCity 3000 (the first game where a typeface other than the default bitmap font was used)

Comic Sans for the headings and (I think) MS Sans Serif on Windows and Chicago on Mac.

The Sims

Comic Sans for all game text

The Sims: Bustin' Out

Frankfurter Medium for all game text (the 0 [nought] is substituted for an uppercase O with stroke)

SimCity 4

Stoclet for headings and Arta for main text.

The Sims 2

Benguiat Gothic for headings and Helvetica Neue for main text.

The Urbz: Sims in the City

Gothic 720 for headings and Franklin Gothic Demi for main text.

SimCity Societies

Tahoma for headings and Arial for main text.

The Sims 3

Helvetica Rounded for headings and Helvetica standard for main text.

SimCity 2013

So far, all the screenshots with game text show Twentieth Century.