Wishbringer by Infocom
Contributed by Nick Saglimbeni on Jul 24th, 2015. Artwork published in
March 1985
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Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams, the interactive-fiction classic by 1980s gamemaker, Infocom. The Wishbringer title font and supporting cover text uses the bold weight of Weiss, while the inside booklet uses the regular one for standard non-title text items. The Infocom logo uses Zorque, designed by Ray Larabie, although it appears this font was actually created based on the company’s logo, given that Larabie would have only been 7 when Infocom’s first game, Zork, was released in 1977.
11 Comments on “Wishbringer by Infocom”
Thanks, Nick! I removed the Zorque tag since it is a font created after the logo, so definitely not used by Infocom. Thanks for adding it your description, though — we’ll keep the link in there for those interested in similar typeface.
Hi Stephen,
No problem, happy to post my first submission. Question: is there a reason the Wishbringer cover image doesn’t show as the profile pic? (Is it a rights thing?) Because I could take a picture of the cover on my end, I think it would be more recognizeable to someone searching 1980s, similar to your AD&D post which instantly made me a fan of Fonts In Use. What a great resource this site is!
Hi Nick, no, that was an arbitrary choice I made when moderating your submission. You are right, it makes more sense to use the cover — I’ve changed it. For the future: You can choose the thumbnail yourself. In Edit mode, click on the image in question and select “Edit Thumbnail”.
There are some subtle (and not-so-subtle!) differences between the Zorque font, and Infocom’s logo.
As well as the shorter arms on the 'F’, there are various curve radius differences:
I made my own Infocom font based on a high resolution scan of their printed material.
khaibitgfx@gmail.com
The Infocom logos currently available in vector format on the internet seem to be based on the Zorque font (i.e. they are not accurate to the original Infocom logo). I recreated a faithful version of the logo in SVG/vector format based on a high resolution scan of a 1988 copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (I actually have the original physical package). It’s posted at Wikimedia Commons. [Top new rendering, Bottom logo on diskette sleeve]
I was also looking for a quality version of the Wishbringer logo – which is clearly based on Weiss Bold. However there are enough differences to suggest that the logo as it appears on the original box art is redrawn or optically altered. Posted below is a sample of the original Wishbringer packaging with original logo at top, below is the redrawn logo. Below that is a sample of the original Wishbringer “W” compared to stock Weiss Bold.
Possible. But keep in mind that it could also be a different version of Weiss Bold than the one you compared against. This was made in 1985 and might use a predigital version. Also in terms of digital fonts, there’s more than one Weiss Bold. As of today, there are five different versions available on MyFonts, not all of which are derived from the same basic digitization. For example, here’s Linotype’s (green) compared to Bitstream’s (red):
As far as I can tell Adobe Weiss Std Bold is as close as it gets with digital fonts, trying to match a modern day precise font to old school printed material that has been scanned, getting perfect matches is probably not possible, anywhere from 95–98% is the best you can hope for.
Since the logo is just basic shapes it was fairly straightforward.
And for the hell of it since this Zorque font exists and is of no use, I made my own based on the recreated logo, with a bottomless pit of fonts out there it was one of them why not kind of scenarios.
My guess, in the 80s this logo was created by hand and is not based on any actual typeface, unless something pops up, that is probably the best guess you’re going to get.
Since this INFOCOM font is free and pure guesswork, anyone who wants to contribute more to it, can email me.
Infocom font:
Recreated sleeve made in Illustrator using fonts: