Elmer Smith "Exhibit" Mystery

[tschock]

Adam,

Great and insightful post, as always, from the Exhibit expert!

I'm not sure that the 'signatures' were done by the same person, but may be at least by the same company. A couple of questions/observations.

A ) Was the scripting intent to 'mimic' signatures? Not to mean as a copy of the actual signature, but merely to present as if someone signed it. Or was it merely used as another type of 'font'?

B ) I'm asking because I don't see the 'signature' similarities they way you do. For example, the "r" in Elmer and Tendler do not appear to be similar, with the "r" in Tendler being more of an actual cursive "r" (or at least, how we were taught to write cursive). Also the "S" in Smith isn't a cursive "S" (with the "E" in Elmer questionable) whereas the "L" in "Lew" and "T" in Tendler is. Or at least the signature as a whole is much more cursive in style. Also if Tendler and Smith were done by the same person, I would think the 'style' would be similar. For example, the "E" in Elmer would have a loop similar to the "L" in Lew.

That said, I'm not saying it could NOT have been done by the same person (using different styles). And I would tend to agree that the FORMAT provided to/by the subcontractor is the same across all of these. So it's definitely possible that it was at least contracted out to the same company. I just wonder if they got Joan from accounting to do one signature and Fred from shipping to do another (or some such) and the graphic artist to embellish those.