【Chomsky】探索纽约时报风格的经典报纸英文字体设计与应用

Chomsky 字体是一款灵感来源于《纽约时报》刊头的报纸字体。这种字体遵循 SIL 开放字体许可证 1.1 版发布，适合免费商用。

Chomsky is a font inspired by the masthead of The New York Times. It is released under the S.I.L. Open Font License, version 1.1, making it suitable for free commercial use.

需要注意的是，这款字体并不是《纽约时报》刊头的精确复制品。它还考虑了运行文本的需求，因此采用了更大的字干大小。以下是一些字符之间的对比：上面是《纽约时报》的标志，下面是 Chomsky 字体……：

This font is not an exact replica of The New York Times masthead but aims to be functional for running text as well, featuring a larger stem size. Below are comparisons between some characters; the N.Y.T logo appears above and Chomsky below…

我惊讶地发现，我可能是第一个开展这个项目的人。许多知名品牌，如 CNN、世嘉和可口可乐，都有致敬它们的字体；事实上，大多数这些字体是在 Unicode 出现之前制作的，并且在元数据中以已不再存在但曾经流行的 Macromedia Fontographer 的名字命名。而 CNN 的模仿猫字体至今已有二十年历史。

I was surprised to find that I might be the first person to undertake this project. Many well-known brands like CNN, Sega, and Coca-Cola have homage fonts; in fact, most were created before Unicode existed and are branded with names from defunct software like Macromedia Fontographer; even CNN’s copycat font has been around for twenty years.

或许，由于在黑色字母上创建额外字符带来的挑战，让其他设计师望而却步；也可能是缺乏相关法律知识。不管怎样，我相信我是第一个完成这一工作的设计师。

The difficulty of creating additional letters in a blackletter typeface may have deterred other designers or perhaps they lacked legal knowledge in this area. Either way, I believe I’m the first to accomplish this task.

关于这款字体是否合法的问题，我可以向您保证，它完全合法。我从扫描图像中创建了每个字符。在美国及大多数国家，字母设计本身并不受版权保护，仅制作软件才受保护。（Eltra Corp 与 Ringer 案例，1978 年；Adobe Systems Inc 与 Southern Software Inc 案例，1998 年）这款字体没有使用任何受版权保护的软件，而我则从扫描图像中逐一追踪每个字符，并添加了一些源材料中未包含的新字符（除了数字5外所有数字、大部分标点符号、pilcrow ¶ 和几乎所有 Unicode 代码点 U+00A1 后面的字符）。

I can assure you that it is completely legal since I created each character from scanned images. In both the United States and many other countries, letter designs themselves are not copyrightable—only the software used to create them is (Eltra Corp vs Ringer case from 1978; Adobe Systems Inc v Southern Software Inc case from 1998). This font does not utilize any copyrighted software at all; I’ve traced every character from scanned images while adding several new characters not found in source materials (all numbers except for ‘5’, most punctuation marks, pilcrow ¶ symbol and nearly all characters after Unicode codepoint U+00A1).

虽然使用这种字体排版个人文件或制作毕业证书等用途完全合法，但如果用于商标注册则可能存在法律灰区，尤其当涉及“纽约时报”这个词时。当然作为非专业人士，我无法提供法律建议。如果您打算在报纸刊头使用此种风格，请务必咨询专业律师。

While using this font for personal documents or creating items like graduation certificates is perfectly legal, using it for trademark purposes could enter into grey areas—especially if it includes “New York Times.” As a layperson without legal expertise myself, I recommend consulting an attorney if you plan on using this typeface within your newspaper’s masthead containing those words.

感谢您的来访，获取更多精彩文章请收藏本站。