Hi. I am creating this thread because I have been commissioned to make a fully rounded font. By that, I mean a font which has purely circular endings, if you understand what I mean. How should one go about figuring out reasonable overshoots (the font will be around 14-20pt) and correctly constructing letters with rounded ends? I do not want to construct rounded, as it adds hassle to editing, however, I am open.
P.S: If any of you remember me (I hope you don't, I behaved poorly before and I apologize,) I am back
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https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/cory-maylett-design/ely-rounded/
You might see that FF DIN Round makes some other adjustments, as described in the doc, such as smoother counter curves (ase) — though the c could be smoother.
And we have tools to mitigate it. With a curve-line intersection, you basically have the same thing but the incoming curvature from a line is always zero:
Is this discontinuity what causes the effect? That would explain why pulling back the node along the line helps, because it reduces the curvature discontinuity to an acceptable degree:
If I'm right, then the bone effect can be dealt with automatically using the same kind of techniques as RMX's harmonizer.
One reason why I might not be right is that this changes the curve tension, and curve tension is part of the design.
What do you think?
To me, many typefaces that compensate for these transitions go a bit overboard — with the result being an unnatural narrowing to a noticeably oval-like shape that I sometimes find distracting (Arial Rounded, for example). I did compensate for the effect, but to a much lesser degree, which again, at least to me, worked best for what I was trying to achieve. Where that sweet spot is probably depends on a number of things — personal preference being one of them.
Back before everything was digital, I remember drawing these kinds of transitions on chromecoat with a technical pen, then using a French curve and an X-Acto knife to carefully scrape of the ink and smooth out the little optical illusions. Never heard it called a "bone bump" until now, though.
when you have found that precise curve for one glyph you can start by copypasting it for use in other glyphs (make sure gridfitting is off for as long as possible) but it will often need tweaking. nothing is ever logical in type design :-)
overshoots generally work the way they do in non-rounded type, meaning that things that don’t overshoot in non-rounded type don’t overshoot in rounded type.
best practice: logical node placement in terms of shape definition are more important than extreme points.
My approach to round terminals which are supposed to look like circular rounded terminals, is to make them just a little more blunt than a circle. The black contour in the terminal on the right side of the image below, is a semicircle; while the red contour is a little more blunt. In my Seconda Round, I made terminals round as in that red contour.