Esterbrook / Edelbrock logos

[milkb0at]

Does anyone know why Esterbrook and Edelbrock have such similar logos? Was it a common font / design back in late 19th / early 20th century, that happens to be magnified by the similar names?

Car engine intake manifold specialists

The pen maker

[OCArt]

I never heard of Edelbrock so I Googled it. Seems it is a automotive supply firm. Maybe the owner liked Esterbrook pens??

[inkstainedruth]

Actually, if you look carefully, the fonts are really quite different from each other.  

There are hundreds and hundreds [possibly thousands] of fonts out there, and sometimes the differences are very subtle.  But these two?  Several of the letters (particularly the lower case "r" and "k") are very different in style.  I suspect it is just a matter of "Ooh, I like this one" in both cases.  Someone picked a script font and then someone else picked a script font, that's all.

[Sorry, but I started out college as a graphic design major, so had classes in stuff like typography.  I'm inordinately fond of University Roman, for instance -- to the point I chose it for my wedding invitations; and when I was taking a women's entrerpreneurship class a number of years ago and had to do a Powerpoint presentation for my business plan, and chose a rather funky font called Desdemona for the headers for each slide.]

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

 

[milkb0at]

From wikipedia: Esterbrook was founded in 1858 (although I don't know when they started using that kind of logo), and Edelbrock in 1938. So both pretty old!

 

I'm in the UK, so I don't have an intuitive understanding of venerable USA companies. Perhaps loads of places used similar designs.

 

I was watching a car program and wondered why on earth the engine had Esterbrook parts 😆 That red background with that white font really stood out.

[AAAndrew]

Esterbrook's been using their logo since long before there were autos. It developed from the "signature" on the back of the boxes meant to indicate authenticity. (because someone who can fake a steel pen is sure unable to fake a label. rolling eyes)

 

I trace the signature in an article on my website. 

 

The Esterbrook Signature – The Steel Pen

[milkb0at]

AAAndrew, that's fantastic. Thanks so much.

 

I'm so used to the fact that branding nowadays is usually designed within an inch of its life (or they just use Helvetica) that I forget that it really used to be someone's signature. I can imagine that the respective founders were taught similar handwriting styles, hence the overall similarity.

 

So there are 3 things that (probably) just happened to coincide: name, handwriting and the red.

[inkstainedruth]

That would not surprise me one bit.  My parents had very similar handwriting, even though my mom grew up in central West Virginia and my dad grew up in Flushing, Queens , in NYC -- but were less than a year apart in age.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[bunnspecial]

Script logos were not at all uncommon for...well a long time. Ford and Coca-Cola both come to mind as very popular ones that are still around.

 

I think the similarity here comes down to the fact that they're both a general style of logo that was popular and they share some letters and length...