In an event co-sponsored by AIGA/NY and Webvisions, “Font Detective” Thomas Phinney shared his forensic typography experience at the AIGA/NY & WebVisions Present: Font Detective, Extra Bold, which took place on Wednesday, February 27, 2013, at the Theater for a New City.

Brad Smith of WebVisions briefly introduced Phinney as “a renaissance designer,” “a web font guru,” and a typeface designer best known for Adobe’s Hypatia Sans.

Phinney shared several cases from his font detective career, each case was accompanied by an amusing alliterative title.

Phinney’s first case, The Case of the Wicked Will, came to him in 1999. After seven years of the death of her husband, Luis, widow Victoria Arrey produced a will which left everything to her and nothing to the several children from Luis’s first marriage. Since the family was suspicious of the will, Phinney was called in to determine whether the document had indeed been created in 1983, as Victoria claimed. Phinney’s first reaction, was, “Damn, that looks awfully nice for 1983!,” he said.

Phinney first identified the typeface as Times New Roman, which dates back to the 1932 and thus wasn’t a helpful clue. He next honed in on the printing technique. High resolution, scalable-font printers didn’t exist in 1983; dot-matrix printers were standard at that time. Looking at the will through a USB microscope revealed ink streaks that could only have come from a 300dpi inkjet printer, a technology released in 1987. Case closed! Phinney eventually tesfied in court at Victoria’s trial, and the will was found fraudulent.

Next up, was The Case of the Presidential Plot. In 2004, in the midst of the Bush-Kerry election, CBS anchor Dan Rather produced memos critical of George W. Bush’s service in the National Guard. Much like Luis Arrey’s will, the alleged memos didn’t display authentic typographic qualities dated to 1972. However, as Phinney explained, “It’s one thing to say, ‘It looks like Microsoft Word, and it looks like Times’ — but how do you prove that, beyond a shadow of a doubt?”

The typeface used in the memos appeared to be Times Roman or Times New Roman, which were indeed available on some 1972 typewriters. However, the proportional letter-spacing, which is commonly found in Word Processors but extremely rare in typewriters, led Phinney to the answer. A few proportional typewriters with proportional letterspacing existed in 1972, the best model was the IBM Selectric Composer. Phinney didn’t have access to an IBM Selectric Composer, but he found specs detailing the exact width that the Selectric allotted to each letter. The specs enabled him to create a font equivalent to the Selectric’s Times Roman. He then compared how the Selectric would letterspace the document to the same type set by Microsoft Word. Word’s letterspacing much more closely matched the memos in question. This key finding, combined with other evidence, were used to declare the memos as forgeries. Case closed! George W. Bush overcame any negative press and won the 2004 re-election.

The final case Phinney shared was The Case of the Respected Rabbi, from 2003. Audience member Jessica Klein, who was involved in this case, gave a brief introduction.

In 2001, the West End Sinai Temple in the Rockaways hired Melvyn May as a new rabbi. Jessica and her family became suspicious of Rabbi May when they noticed that his name was missing from a list of area rabbis. A thorough detailing of his resumé raised more questions about the authenticity of his rabbinical degree. One night, a furious Rabbi May (who heard about the Kleins’ suspicions) appeared at the family’s doorstep with a copy of his rabbinical degree. He left the document on the Kleins’ kitchen table before storming out. The Kleins reached out to the Type Directors Club for help proving the authenticity of the degree. The Type Directors Club put the Kleins in touch with Phinney.

Phinney immediately noticed that while most of the degree’s lettering was hand-drawn calligraphy, one line appeared to be set in a calligraphic typeface instead — Melvyn May’s name. A close study of similar script typefaces revealed it to be Monotype Cursiva, a font released in the 1990s. This was a clear conflict with the document’s date of 1968. Melvyn May’s rabbinical degree was proven to be a forgery. Case closed! The Kleins shared this information with the Temple Board. Unfortunately, the Board chose not to act, and May remained at the temple until 2005.

What are the lessons from Phinney’s  font detective work? “Listen up,” Phinney told the audience, “if you’re going to forge an old type document from just about any time from the mid-50s through the late 80s on your computer, what should you do? Just use Courier,” and if you want to be extra careful, “well, really the best thing is — just use a typewriter!,” he said.

Additional Information:
Thomas Phinney

Event Details:
AIGA/NY & WebVisions Present: Font Detective, Extra Bold

Event Photos:
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To view additional photos, or to contribute your photos, visit our AIGA New York Flickr group.

Special thanks to guest contributing writer, Karen Vanderbilt, for the AIGA/NY Manuel Miranda, A Question of Identity event recap and photos. Karen Vanderbilt can be found at Ideas On Purpose, and Some of the Parts.