Urban Renewal is a set of insanely great TrueType versions of the long-forgotten city-named fonts of Mac OS Classic, not seen since System 7.1. These TrueType versions are kare-fully constructed to be as faithful to the original designs as possible, while breaking free of the bitmap grid in subtle ways.
Download Urban Renewal
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Download All (DMG Format) | |
Liverpool (aka London) | |
Sanfrisco (aka San Francisco) |
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Download All (ZIP Format) | |
Los Altos (aka Los Angeles) | |
Torrance (aka Toronto) |
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Athene (aka Athens) | |
Parc Place (aka Cream, aka Palo Alto) | |
Valencia (aka Venice) |
How faithful are these to the original?
See for yourself. Compare this snapshot of the original bitmap fonts side-by-side with the corresponding Urban Renewal fonts at the same point size:
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Why not use the original city names?
The original city names are trademarks of Apple, Inc., so I have to use different names.
Will you create a TrueType version of Cairo, Mobile, or Taliesin?
No. I consider those fonts to be technically artwork, which is copyrighted, as opposed to typography, which is not. I would do so only with permission in the form of a written letter from Susan Kare herself.
That being said, there does exist a TrueType version of Cairo out there somewhere.
Will you create a TrueType version of Chicago, Geneva, New York, or Monaco?
No. There are already great TrueType versions of those fonts, created by the fine folks at Bigelow & Holmes, creators of the Lucida family of fonts. TrueType fonts are technically computer software, which is copyrighted. If I did attempt to create knockoffs of those fonts, the temptation to just copy and paste the outlines would be far too great, and there is no way I could top the existing designs.
The official TrueType versions of the four basic Macintosh fonts may be
difficult to find, but not impossible. Every Mac OS X installation still
comes with Geneva and Monaco, found in /System/Library/Fonts/
as dfont files. All four can be found in any installation of System 7 or
Mac OS 8 or 9. Of course, versions from Mac OS 9 are preferred over versions
from Mac OS 8.5, which are preferred over versions from Mac OS 8, which are
preferred over versions from System 7. System 7.5.3 can be downloaded from
Apple's web site. These can be converted to ttf files by just copying the
contents of the sfnt resource into a ttf file.
