A little note about Quasimidi’s typography.

For some years I’ve been writing the Quasimidi 309’s full name as Rave-0-Lution with a zero in the middle rather than a capital O, which I’ve never liked but had somehow believed it was the original. But it struck me earlier that I can’t remember why I thought that, so I should check. And I realised that I can’t tell the difference at a glance between the O (presumably) in LUTION and the 0 (presumably) in 309 anyway, let alone decide which of them the middle character matches.

I do have a PDF of the manual but it’s a scan. As it happens I’ve had the font — Serpentine Bold Italic (PS Type 1) since about the time Quasimidi made this and it’s a good bet that they had the same font, as it was part of a Freehand package at the time if I recall. So I looked at them on screen to see if there’s a difference and couldn’t see any. So I put them one atop the other in Illustrator with colours mixed, and, yes, there’s a difference, but to be honest it’s so slight that it might as well not be there.

I never much liked this font though I probably used it for odd jobs around that time once or twice as we weren’t spoiled for choice. (Nor were Quasimidi.) But this isn’t what I’d call good design. Perhaps this package is traced from the originals, and the originals were identical? In which case I shouldn’t bother asking if it’s a zero and just use the O? I took close up shots of the middle character and the O as printed on the Q309 to compare, and put the one atop the other in Photoshop. There’s less of a difference here than between the font outlines, but still, there is a difference, and most of the differences are in the same places, which I think is a smaller difference than you’d expect from lithographic printing on brushed aluminium anyway. (In both images the majuscule O is in green and the zero (?) is in red.)

I’m not completely certain one way or the other, but I’m feeling free to write it as Rave-O-lution rather than Rave-zero-lution in future.

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