I'm wondering others experience on this:
Of course, every typeface can have different needs, but for something like a relatively standard sans serif family with multiple weights, I'm curious how extreme of a difference in stem width/weight you use for light and bold masters (I call them light and bold just for distinction in the working file, you may call them something else).
I know some may use 3 or 4 masters (light, regular, bold, etc.) but I've so far found that I can interpolate all intermediate weights pretty well from just having a light and bold (plus, in Glyphs, a few brace layers for /e /a /s as needed) and being careful about point placement.
I draw my Light master somewhere in the 20-30 stem width range and my Bold somewhere in the 180-200 stem width range so that it doesn't take much to extrapolate a Thin and Black. The awkward part is that this is a pretty extreme visual difference in weight to switch back and forth between as I'm drawing all my glyphs. I try to avoid having a Regular master to keep things a little simpler, but I have to rely on previews of the intermediate weights as I go along.
Setting the stem widths for the masters listed above, I can generally add or subtract 10 - 20 units for extrapolated weights like Thin and Black with pretty solid results. Beyond that though and the points can get a little wild.
What's your setup look like: 2 masters? More masters? What stem widths do you work from for your extreme masters?
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In the book weight, I usually make the vertical thickness of the lc, in points, the same as the horizontal thickness of the UC. Then I work out the other weights, compensating and discreetly cheating where there is need. Repeat for italics, synchronize the design, check, fine-tune, finish.
3 masters for better control. hairline, book, ultra. After I got the first two, I generate the third and retouch it, then I go back to synchronize. Boldening effects are also my friend for the grunt work.
{I just realized I misread the title of this post. Sorry.}
A Regular master would be helpful, for me I've found not all glyphs need the control/tweaks via a Regular, so the brace layer in Glyphs has worked well for the few glyphs that do need some tweaking.
The thinnest instances I generate are usually a bit thicker than the Light master, so they pick up a subtle bit of modulation/optical correction.
One thing I've started trying with sanses is drawing a 'regular' weight, then deriving a hairline weight from the centerlines of the regular's strokes, and then, when I've got those more or less where I want them, extrapolating a rough bold. Then I take this extrapolated bold, which looks like pure hell, and sculpt a proper bold out of it, as if each of the wonky raw glyphs were a lump of clay. But the extrapolation does automatically fill all the glyph slots with something approximately the right size and shape to work on, and with the node structure, anchors, rough kerning, and (very) rough sidebearings already in place. Now and then you even get a glyph where the raw extrapolation actually looks pretty good and just needs polishing. And studying the way the extrapolations go wrong can help me understand the proportions of my regular and hairline better.
I'm about to publish an eight-weight grotesque I did this way, and this method got me to some bold weights I'm happy with a whole lot faster than expected.
I like to draw all masters at the most extreme points, avoiding extrapolation since I’d rather have full control throughout the entire process. It's really helpful and more efficient to plan and make these decisions before getting too far. Working through and cleaning up automation of any kind is more unpleasent to me than any extra work required to plan out and carefully draw all extremes together from the start. I'll experiment with various extrapolations if the design is in an relatively early, rough stage though.
The book Size-specific adjustments to type designs has a section discussing masters. I've always loved the quote by Christian Schwartz stating “You have designed enough masters when you can cover all of the zones without any of them looking wrong – too clumsy, too brittle, too tight.”
The beauty of extrapolating between Hairline and Regular is that one gets a degree of precise subtlety in the Extra Light and Light weights that is very hard to attain by just drawing those weights directly.
The only exception is in newfangled workflows without corner masters... but these are tricky to get right.
I don't know what Max means. For me, I just draw a single path outline in the mask layer, then stroke it. I usually need a UPM of at least 2000 to get a cleanly stroked path.
With my latest release, Barteldes, horizontals are all fine lines with little variation across the design. So I was able to go from extralight to bold with only two masters.
For Antarctican Headline, did you space and kern those 2 masters first before creating the other 2... or waited and spaced/kerned all 4 together?