Hi,
This is my first post here. I am not professional typedrawer nor I have the ambition to become that. I did my career in horticulture and botany, with the rose and its history and botany as a speciality. Now I spend my time at writing fictions and… trying to draw some typefaces who matches the spirit of my writings. And as this spirit has something in common with the humor and burlesque of novels from the humanist area (I think at Rabelais, Cervantès…) or somewhat later (Cyrano, Jonathan Swift…) I would like to try some Humane or Venetian type drawing. For Geranium my inspiration came from several modern interpretations of the Venetians (Hadriano, Centaur, High Tower…) but also from the observation of Janson characters. And my challenge was to work without any angle and with few straight lines. I decided this organic look for several reasons : last years I worked a lot at reproducing different optical sizes of George Auriol typefaces (I will perhaps submit them as another post later) and on November 2015 I was disturbed by political violence which came around and as that was the moment where I decided to begin the drawing of my first personal text font I decided that it should be sweetly organic. Of course I will do something different later but this one will keep this character.
ivan louette, louvain-la-neuve, Belgium
3
Comments
The extremely small detailing in the italics could cause problems. I'm also not sure the italic /t works... and is the Roman /M perhaps a bit too wide?
Otherwise, very solid start!
You are right about the italics. It's a very different beast and I am not very sure in this area at the moment. I am not a good calligrapher (I am left hand and have some special remembrance from my early school times because of that ;-) Perhaps they are too narrow too.
About roman capitals I think also they are a little bit too slender at the moment.
The R might be a bit to much. You can get away with the long tail at the Q but the R appears more often.
But as Christian said, page looks quite nice already.
In fact I dislike cancellaresca italics because I find it too systematic, and on the other hand I find Garamond italics a little bit disturbing for my eye because of its variations in inclination. Thus I must navigate between these two extremes… and perhaps I should find another way. However for example I like a lot the few I have seen of the "Guillaume" italics : it seems there is some logic in it which is absent in other Garamond style italics I know.
Are your /9 and /0 even shorter than the x-height? That's very unusual indeed.
On the other hand, except for the small detailing you quoted and I understand well, do you have some advice about my italics proof ? (They are wider than the few you have seen in my first post.)
My process was slanting the roman at first, then changing all ends of characters by something which agree my eye and which breaks efficiently the slanting visual effect, and then slightly (or more drastically for example for /m, /n and /h) redraw the verticals to make smoother transitions. Perhaps very strange as a process…
I tried some different ends, but the more classic ones for italics didn't satisfy me because what ever I could try elsewhere the too rigid "slant" effect came back.
You are right about kerning. It's more advanced in roman ; italics capitals aren't kerned at the moment.
- I think the middle bar in e could be slightly less tilted, mirroring the angle of the midle bar in 'a'
- Top-right of s could be moved t the right a little
- The top-right serif on u could be wider
- Top of t looks a bit weak.
- Funky accent is a little too much for my taste.
- Ear of g looks a little timid. The pointy part in the middle could go a little further to the left I think.
- Serifs on the top-left of caps could be larger
- the funky tail on u a d etc. could be larger
- Your ( and ) look a bit pointy in the middle. Maybe that's on purpose?
- I think the R needs to be normalized, and Q could beneift fro that as well.
- Lovely Z!
- c seems to be falling to left a little
- I agree with the others that the italic needs redrawing. The roman is a text beast, the italic seems more suitable for display purposes.
Keep going!
@AbiRasheed , you are welcome ! I didn't take it as a critic ;-)
@Samuil Simonov Thanks for your appreciation. Unfortunately I lack of time to extend this font which I would use essentially for my writings. However I will share it free and open source. And thus if someone would be interested to extend it when it will be diffused that could be a good thing !