Scratch Font: Andrew Smith’s Fine-Line Display or Max Kisman’s FF Family?

ITC’s Scratch account credits Andrew Smith and dates the design to 1995. It describes closely overlapping fine felt-tip-like lines, with small white spaces remaining between them, based on sans-serif cursive forms. The publisher limits its intended role to headlines and display. This is a particular construction, not a filter that scratches any installed typeface. For a drawing-night poster, use the original specimen to examine the title’s internal light gaps before placing it over artwork.

FontFont’s FF Scratch is instead credited to Max Kisman and dated 1990. Its resource list separates Regular from Outline, while its account documents ligatures, case-sensitive forms and proportional lining figures. Do not attach Smith’s fine-line explanation to Kisman’s family, or transfer one product’s features to the other. On a comparison sheet, label the publisher, designer and selected resource above each sample. If you choose the Outline resource, inspect it directly rather than trying to imitate it by adding a stroke to another font.

For the ITC resource, compare SKETCH NIGHT first on a plain light background and then over the intended artwork. Inspect whether the small gaps inside the strokes remain visible, and move the heading to a quieter area if the image competes with them. Keep the event details in a separate ordinary text style rather than forcing the display construction into paragraphs. The homepage’s copyable text treatments substitute Unicode characters; they do not copy either Scratch family’s stroke drawing, outline resource or OpenType behavior into a message.