Photo Credit: Amber GregorySo why does Thomas answer to the title Font Dectective? For starters, he was involved in the research and commentary on the disputed Bush national guard memos. Thomas is frequently consulted as an expert on several cases of allegedly forged documents, which is how he pulled a sizable crowd with grumbling stomachs to the screening room of the YCBA for his lunchtime talk on Friday.
He treated the audience with a few cases he’s in which he’s played type sleuth, particularly in the state of California. Here’s 2 of them.
Case #1: The Evil Stepmother:
Once upon a time, a nice man with a couple of kids married an evil woman with an evil daughter. The husband died and unfortunately he had no will which meant his wife would inherit ⅓ of his estate and his children would receive ⅔, but somehow the wife was able to swindle everything.
The children tried contesting this and finally, 7 years after husband had died, the evil stepmother finally produced a will that was dated 1983. Enter Thomas.
Thomas Phinney
Typographer / Vice President @ FontLab (Portland, Oregon)
He began by looking at the font used in the will. It was written in Times New Roman but then he noticed that the print quality was just a little too good for something produced in 1983. After some study, he finally concluded that the document had been printed on an inkjet printer that wouldn’t have been available in 1983.
The conclusion: The evil stepmother was the mastermind behind the forged will and recieve help from her friend who typed the will and acted as a “witness”. The evil stepdaughter forged the signature on the document. Eventually, the man’s children got the money they deserved and they all lived happily ever after. Except for the stepdaughter and stepmother who fled prosecution and have been hiding ever since.
Case #2: The Quarterback Conundrum
Not too long ago (nor far away) there lived a man named “Bullet” Bob Hayes. Bob Hayes was a particularly speedy gold medal Olympic athlete and during his time was considered one of the world’s fastest men.
Eventually, Bob got tired of running all the time, so he switched to football and become a wide receiver for Dallas Cowboys. In 2002, Bob passed away and in 2004, there was an attempt to induct him into the Hall of Fame which failed, but another attempt in 2009 proved to more successful. Because Bob was obviously not available to read an acceptance speech, his stepsister read one for him. She claimed that Bob thought he may some day be inducted into the Football Hall of Fame and so he had written an acceptance letter before he died.
However, during the acceptance speech, a reporter caught a shot of the acceptance letter and questions began to rise. Could have this letter really been written in 1999 like his stepsister claimed?
The conclusion: This one’s easy. The acceptance letter was written in Calibri and Calibri didn’t make its debut until it replaced Times New Roman as the default font in Microsoft Office 2007. You do the math.
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Thomas Phinney is guru of fonts and typography for Extensis, purveyors of the WebINK web font service, Suitcase Fusion and Universal Type Server. He has testified in court as an expert witness, and was twice quoted in the Washington Post regarding the forged memos concerning president Bush’s National Guard service. Thomas has an MS in printing from RIT, and an MBA from UC Berkeley. His typeface Hypatia Sans is an Adobe Original.
— posted by Brooke Francesi
