Zodiac Killer Font, Pt. I


Zodiac CipherI was busy reading “Zodiac” by Robert Graysmith the last week and I am about finishing the book. It’s a very good read and I recommend it, especially when you’re into details in the investigations or details in general. And while looking through Zodiac’s letter and ciphers I felt somehow the urge to make a TrueType font of Zodiac’s handwriting. So here it is.
EDIT: Renamed the Font from Zodiac Cipher ’69 to Zipher. Sounds slicker and orders alphabetically nicely with all the other Zodiac Killer Fonts I’ve created so far (or will in the future).

Zipher TrueType font

Perhaps you are interested also in other fonts of the Zodiac Killer font series:

  • Zipher for the ciphers
  • Zanity for neat handwriting
  • Zodiac, the Original Zodiac

It wasn’t as easy as anticipated but still I managed to transport Zodiac’s thorough way of writing into the font which has all symbols used by Zodiac in his letter to Toschi on November 8, 1969. If you click the image you’ll see the mapping of the keys which is optimized for English/American keyboard layouts.

The very generous and very meticulous Mr. Richard Smith informed me of a missing character: The P with the filled counter in row 5, column 14 as well as in row 12, column 15 I mistook for a badly reproduced generic P when making the font and thus omitting it. It’s now mapped to the semicolon (;) so you won’t have to look very far away from your P key on your keyboard. In addition I cleaned all the outlines and adjusted some other details resulting in a better font with a smaller file-size.

EDIT: Since I’ve gotten a number of complaints that the semicolon won’t work (or at least behave strangely) in Windows 7 and on Mac OS X and my first attempts in fixing it didn’t quite cut it, I decided to do a re-packaging, some cleaning up and attempt some other minor fixes.

What’s new in Zipher 2001:

  • Font works now with all glyphs also in Windows 7/64bit
  • Font works now with all glyphs also on OS X
  • Font’s file size shrunk by about 50% without compromising any of the outlines

Download it like before and be sure to uninstall/delete the old font first. And don’t forget to lick the Flattr/Kachingle/donate button if you can spare a dime. Thanks!

 
See this chart for reference on the symbols.

Usage of the Zodiac Cipher Font

When typing lower case you mostly get the normal letters (except for the Q), when typing upper case you’ll get the alternative version of the letter, e.g. a backwards R or an upside down T. If you’re looking for the flag symbols use the numerals, also with caps for different symbols.

  • You’ll get the small Zodiac logo by typing Z
  • The big Zodiac logo which he used as signature is the &
  • Type ! for the solid circle.
  • The single time when Zodiac corrected one symbol (row 6, column 12) can also be reproduced hitting ]
  • EDIT: The P with the filled counter can by reached via the semicolon.

Donation & Download

The font is donation ware. So if you want to say a little “thanks” by donating money that would be really nice. Thank in advance!

Patrons of the Promenade Blog so far:

  • Mr. Richard Smith

Click the Image to download
the Zipher TrueType Font


































Creative Commons License


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Austria License.

Aug 31, 2007
4:40

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Comments

Mike (Oct 29, 2010)

Nice job. On my Mac the semicolon is blank.

Jack (Feb 24, 2011)

Also in Windows 7 the semicolon is blank (no filled P).

Phil Strahl (Feb 25, 2011)

fixed ^^

Jack (Mar 02, 2011)

Sorry but the semicolon is still blank :/. Great font by the way :)

Phil Strahl (Mar 02, 2011)

thanks and fixed — this time it really should work! :)

Jack (Mar 03, 2011)

Yep, thank you very much :)

Jack (Mar 03, 2011)

Oh no, the semicolon works but now the percent (triangle) doesn’t :D

Phil Strahl (Mar 04, 2011)

Darn it — every time I fix a hole, a new one rips open! I guess I fixed this one as well, but I’m only claiming 90 to 95% certainty about it ;) . Thanks for your patience, Jack!

Russell (Oct 16, 2011)

Hi. I’m creating a music video for an artist who has created a concept album about Zodiac. I would like to use your fonts and credit you at the end of the video for your hard work. Question: how do I type lowercase? Please respond to me offline at my email.

Thanks.

Jim (Dec 05, 2011)

How do I make the Zodiac cross hairs symbol?

Phil Strahl (Dec 05, 2011)

hi jim! with the Zipher font you get this by typing the ampersand (&).

Derek (Aug 30, 2012)

Hi, I have Windows Vista and in word I cannot get the @ symbol to work!

Also how do you get the filled in triangle?

Thanks

Phil Strahl (Sep 08, 2012)

Hi Derek, apologies for the late reply! I just tried it out the the @-sign is working perfectly fine in both Windows Vista and Windows 7 with both German an English keyboard layouts, so I don’t know where the problem lies. Alternatively you could try to access the @-sign with its ASCII code. YOu can do this by holding the Alt key and typing 64 on the numpad. I hope this helps.

And you can get the filled triangle by typing the number-sign: #