I thought you'd chime in with your contrariness but that is what I thought too. I thought the original (bottom) one was nice but maybe a little dull. Now I think the top one just needs to be a bit wider with a bit more space around it and a bit more weight in places:
"ed" gap is huge. I think you may have too large sidebearings on the round letters. "ngra" is very tight then "lat" and "ed" are very loose.
I like it! I think the /ed/ in /Congratulated/ still feels just a little too widely spaced, but that might be because the space between /te/ is quite a bit smaller. /th/ looks pretty good, but the other /t .../ pairs could use just a hair more space after /t, maybe 5-10 units.
It’s finished, finally! I can’t believe I first posted this in November 2017. It’s a good job I’m not a bandwagon-jumper or trend-chaser. I expanded the family to include optical weights from Display, though Headline to Text. X-height gets progressively larger from Display to Text. Lower case ‘a’ is the most noticeable change from these examples. Use your own words to check out the type tester to compare different styles. Final comment; Every new Serif doesn’t have to be a revival!
Thanks to you two. The 'a' always bothered me, I felt like it didn't really fit in. I must have messed around with it for much longer than necessary (as usual), but I'm happy with the final version.
Comments
"ed" gap is huge. I think you may have too large sidebearings on the round letters. "ngra" is very tight then "lat" and "ed" are very loose.