The Google Fonts contributor guidelines pointed me to this forum as a safe place to get feedback on my type designs. I was hoping to get feedback on a recent font I created called Gothic Gumdrop. 

This project emerged out of an effort to combine unique and unrelated type styles. I noticed that in the Google Fonts collection there were a lot of cute fonts, some bubbly fonts, and many blackletter fonts, but there wasn’t any options that combined all three of those styles. After rounds of exploration this font emerged, which tries to be cute and bubbly but blackletter at the same time. One of the most difficult aspects was to preserve the blackletter styles while making it chunkier. I think the end result feels more blackletter than cute, but it was hard to preserve both. 

Another unique aspect of this submission is that this font is 100% generated with AI. I created it using the Mixfont font generation model. This also helped me ensure that the glyph coverage supports the 320+ glyphs required for the Google Fonts Latin core set. 

I would love your feedback on the font overall, style direction, and whether there are areas that could be improved. I also would love to hear any thoughts on the usage of AI and if that is OK for a Google Fonts submission.  I wanted to be transparent about it.

Thank you,
Eric

1. Once I eventually set up my blog it would be cool if I could use a font I made myself for the body text. I want something legible and readable to be conducive to long-form reading, but something that also has a good amount of warmth and character.
2. Serif fonts are an obvious choice for readability, warmth, and - if done well - character. However, they have a fatal flaw for something like a blog, in that many people still use low-dpi displays and serif fonts have a tendency to become unpleasant when rasterized at low pixel sizes.
3. The main solution to this is heavy hinting for small sizes, but hinting is a laborious process and some platforms (macOS) effectively ignore hinting these days, even when driving low-dpi displays.
4. So the solution I came up with is to make a typical old-style serif, but the serifs shrunk down to about half (or less) of the usual size. This lets the font almost magically transform in to a humanist sans when rasterized real small, while still having serifs for grounding and character when more pixels are available.

Along with the designer, Behailu Barento (@typehabesha ), we are very happy to introduce the Hibur Mono typeface, available for review from:  https://github.com/typehabesha/HiburMono/

A synopsis: Hibur Mono is a single-weight, monospaced, Ethiopic typeface designed for columnar display environments such as computer terminals and software code development interfaces.

The Hibur Mono Ethiopic glyphs have been designed from the ground up and optimized for the fixed-width contraints of a monospaced typeface. Hibur Mono is compatible with the Noto Sans Mono geometric dimensions. The non-Ethiopic glyphs in Hibur Mono have also been leveraged from Noto Sans Mono.

The design was born from a client's branding project that I later developed into a custom typeface.

The client is a well-established running brand and retailer in Rome, Italy, and the identity/typeface suggests the intersection of individual paths, hence the "softness" of the curves.

The family is designed to cover multiple weights, from ExtraLight to Black.

I'd love to hear your technical feedback, as I'm self-taught in the world of variable typeface design and this is my first real approach to type design.

Any thoughts are welcome, thank you!

I've been working on a sans display font that I really like, but there’s one thing that keeps bothering me about sans-serif fonts, the diagonal glyphs. No matter what I do, the diagonals always look heavier in color compared to the straight glyphs.

I would truly appreciate any feedback you have about the overall design of the font. This is also my first time designing punctuation, so I’d really appreciate any thoughts or suggestions regarding that as well.

The PDF proof is attached.

Have a good one folks.

•  First and foremost, her name is "Marcela". Explaining the relevance of the M.
•  The double "SS" is derived from her surname. I'm not sure if I should reveal her identity, but she has an Italian surname with a double SS.
•  The entire word Markessa refers to Marquess people in royalty, and we intend to carry that concept throughout the visual identity.

•  I'm not that confident about how the "S" and the "A" are drawn
•  Letter-spacing at "ESS" feels tight at small scales for me, I'm not sure. But I think there is something in there and needs improvement, despite having already made adjustments.
•  If serifs are consistent and if the overall letter-forms look good.

• I've been playing around with two lowercase b/d/p/q versions, part of me wants to go with the lowest quick brown fox version below to connect more to their uppercase counterparts, but in lowercase I feel like those letters just want to be curved with an overshoot... I go back and forth
• I'm also struggling to know what level of optical corrections to make between the uppercase and lowercase glyphs. Sometimes the lowercases feel too bold. Sometimes they feel just fine.

I’m a 19yo type enthusiast from Hong Kong who got no graphic design background but get into the whole typography thing anyway. After reading quite some books and stuff about typography and type design I’ve decided to give it a go. I know many actually advocate to draw something more interesting at start but let’s say I start the project purely for studying how to draw a standard text face. The goal is to get familiarize the process and get better sense of how the letters relate to each other. 

The inspiration of the typeface comes from a novel I read not long ago. You could say it’s an imaginative project in which I draw a book face to re-set the novel (although it turn out to be maybe a bit serious? Still long way to go before I can grasp the sensational aspect of type apparently). Following is a long-ish description of the from concept to execution, in case it help with the critique or some other beginners are interested. 

Concept

First I look for reference, something that has the literary quality of old style type but feels more rigor, sharp and self-assured. I look at different Dutch old style type from van den Keere to Caslon and finally settled on Fell type English roman as it fit the qualities that I’m looking for. (Plus there are extra high-res scan available on Kris Sowersby’s Flickr album and let me try my hand on a quasi-revival)

Lowercase

I started with the lowercase. I would say it’s reasonably close to the reference. I want to capture the moderately high contrast and dark appearance of Fell type. It should feel sharp in analogue way rather than digital, with reasonably sharp terminals and joints. I also kept the modulated proportion and closely-packed verticals. The serif is long and sharp as I want the characters to anchor on the line.

• k, v, w, x, y: I like the narrow v and w in the reference so I extend that to other characters. Though they does feel a bit small so I increase the overshoot slightly. I try no to slavishly copy all the quirks of the reference, although give my amateurishness that’s likely the case.
• h, n, m: Also on narrow side. Shoulder ever-so-slightly rounder than the reference, something I pull from other Fell type. There are quite pronounced join height different between h/n/m and b/d/p/q in the reference. I temper it slightly but keep some as feature.
• a, c, f, g, j, r, y: Just a slight bit of sharpness and thrust added to the terminals. I don’t want them to feel inky.
• s: Remove the backslant in the original.

Uppercase

Then I start drawing the uppercase. I didn’t stick to the English roman but also looked at other Fell roman and probably some Kis/Caslon, something less modulated in width. Keeping the uppercase and lowercase coherent is what I found the most challenging. Originally I let the thick, thin strokes and terminals be optically thicker and continue to draw the whole set of caps, only to find the sharpness and the literary quality of lowercase didn’t transfer at all. Then I take reference at other fonts and realize it maybe a valid approach to keep the hairline and terminals almost as sharp as lowercase. (one precedent being Hoefler Text). (This is also the time I realize that I might’ve underestimate the sharpness of many Renaissance typefaces. Typefaces like Galliard and Requiem are laser-sharp, much more than what I’ve drawn. Though I find the pragmatic texture quite likeable so I kept it this way.)

• B, D, P, R: I borrow from Granjon the way the bowl start decending immediately. They give the subtle swashness that match the lowercase (I think).
• C, G: surprisingly difficult to get right. The stress is quite tilted so that the tension feel coherent to the O. The almost overbite and the beak of the G is something I adore from the Fell type French Canon.
• E: I refrained from making the bar modulated as that would be too dynamic. The brackets balance between stately and dynamic.

Numeral

I do admit my knowledge to numeral (especially old style) is close to none. I basically let my intuition guide me. (For example: how spaced out should they be so that it feel like reading them one by one while keeping them coherent; how long should the extenders be compare to lowercase) As I look at them right now they are probably not terrible, but it’s not like I know how to judge.

Spacing

I spent quite some time in spacing by actually using the font in browser (via the amazing Type-X) and smooth out stuffs that creates blobs. Lowercase should be fine (hopefully) but I haven’t been able to make the uppercase very smooth: the classic issue in which HH and HO feel alright but OO on the tight side. (I know many font actually apply positive kerning for OO pairs but I’m not sure if I want to use that for basic spacing. Of course I haven’t kern anything at this stage.)

I’m trying to figure the italic out but if the roman is bad there’s no point for that, so I figure I’ll figure out what problems it got in the roman first. Thanks in advance!