Finding fonts - A Walkthrough

A few weeks ago a client came in and wanted a lyric from My Chemical Romance's Black Parade arced across his back. He loved the typography in the CD jacket, and wanted to figure out a way to incorporate the feel into the tattoo...

After finishing the project, I realized my steps may seem obvious to a graphic designer, but might seem interesting to a tattoo artist.

Here's how I prepared the type.

First, I needed to figure out what fonts were used. A couple I knew offhand, the rest called for some help.

MyFonts.Com has a wonderful tool called WhatTheFont?!. It lets us upload an image (of text) so it can help recognize the closest font. Scanning the track listing with the various types, made it easy to separate each word with a different typeface into individual images (gifs). Once uploaded, WhatTheFont then asks you to designate each letter. Take some time with it, it's both fun and handy.

It'll then give you a font listing of matches. Eyeball through, picking out the closest. Often, it'll be exact. Some of the fonts can be incredibly expensive, while others you may already have or be able to download (a near equivalent) at free fonts sites such as dafont.com.

After identifying and downloading the fonts, I installed them on my computer and spent some time in Adobe Illustrator. It was then a matter of typing out each word separately and piecing them together like a visual puzzle.

Quick side note:How did I arc the entire piece?
After the text is perfect, convert it to outlines (Shift+Ctrl+O). Then, after selecting everything and grouping it together (Ctrl+G) go up to Object > Envelope Distort > Make With Warp to create an arc - not an arch, geez.

Quickly enough, I killed the black fill inside the letters and gave it a black outline. Easy.

My mentor, Drew, showed his client the text examples and added two great James Jean illustrations (one/two) from the CD jacket, as per his request.

And finally, Drew worked his magic, outlining the stencil (bottom right to top left to minimize smearing!) and made it look easy. The tattoo turned out wonderful.

The final font selection:
Bauer Bodoni Standard 1 Bold - I AM
Poplar Standard Black - NOT
Roswell 2 ITC - AFRAID
Bauer Bodoni Standard Bold Condensed - TO KEEP
Bauer Bodoni Standard 2 Black - ON
Folio Standard Bold Condensed - LIVING