Type Design Technique & Theory — TypeDrawers

Textura Eszett

Nick Shinn — Tue, 12 May 2026 21:52:36 +0000

My latest project, Puffery, updates the “Olde English” style of blackletter with Roman-based capitals—providing better legibility for those unfamiliar with the classic Fraktur capitals, and also to enable a neat all-caps setting. So I had to include a suitable capital Eszett, giving it some commonality with the lower case ß.

There are two variants of the typeface—Vintage Capitals (above) and Regular (below).

Anyone paint as an outlet?

Adam Ladd — Fri, 08 May 2026 15:33:39 +0000

Kind of specific, and opened a discussion similar to this a couple months ago...

But I'm curious, given the element of drawing involved in type design, if there are others out there that paint (or other forms of art) as an outlet?

I've tried to pick up a brush again from time to time, but tough to get myself to dive deeper into it and enjoy it as a way to get off the screen and have a more tangible expression. I think it's partly committing to the time and then cleanup involved (considering watercolors partially for that reason).

Similarly, curious if there are certain styles/movements that most inspire you in that area or even inform how you view type design and the shapes? For me, I've found myself drawn to impressionism and the semi-freedom of it to reinterpret but still be understandable.

Open type Glyph table version 1

mitradranirban — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:10:55 +0000

Is the proposal to include cubic bezier in .ttf fonts accepted by OpenType?
If enabled, what will be its pros and cons over cff/cff2?

Vertical metrics standards

Tofu Type Foundry — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 19:46:44 +0000

I have some naive questions. This article from the Glyphs team dives into the complex issue of vertical metrics; even after reading it numerous times I still don’t fully understand the intricacies. In the past I’ve gone with “the Google strategy” outlined in the article, since it appears to be a well-rounded solution.

What I’d like to know is: Do you use one of their recommended methods for setting hhea, typo, and win values? Is it necessary to use a different method because of the needs of the typeface? Does each foundry have a standard so all their fonts work well together in their own library?

Postscript name issue.

ok_locksmith_8414 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 15:31:20 +0000

I am testing my typeface through Fontspector, and this FAIL message comes up. (I included a picture of it below.)

The message pretty much explains what the issue is. In some apps, instead of just “Rolesville,” I get Rolesville-Thin. It’s saying the PostScript name is wrong. I am making a 9-weight typeface (100-900). My font file has three masters: Thin, Medium, and Black, with interpolated instances in between.

I tried to research this, but I don’t understand it.

Can someone tell me what settings I need to add or adjust in my font file to fix this issue?

I am using Glyphs 3.4.1

Thanks.

Which form of the Cyrillic lowercase ghe with a stroke (uni0493) is preferable in the italics?

Stefan Peev — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:43:57 +0000

Here are some semples of the Cyrillic lowercas ghe with a stroke (uni0493). Which one is more correct for the italic style?

Redraw vs adjusting font (which is faster/easier?)

Carl Enlund — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:56:49 +0000

This is me thinking out loud:

Isn't it sometimes faster/easier to redraw your font from scratch? When you realize a lot needs to be changed in the design.

Rather than trying to make adjustments to existing glyphs/nodes.

Redraw = throw away what nodes/paths you've drawn and draw them from scratch (perhaps keeping old drawing as visual reference).

Factors that can influence whether it's worth the effort to redraw font:

- current glyph count (maybe redrawing falls apart at >50-100 glyphs depending on complexity)
- how big the change is
- master compatibility
- if glyphs use simple construction that can be derived from a recipe, e.g. use /d to make /p - then you just follow that recipe to quickly redraw whole font from scratch
- how strictly you want to keep shapes/motifs consistent across glyphs (strict consistency could favor a redraw)

Types of changes I'm thinking of below. Would any of these be sufficient for redrawing from scratch:

- vibe feels off (biggest reason to redraw i believe)
- change genre
- proportions feel off across glyphs
- bad curve structure (tooling for harmonize and extremas are useful here)
- make font bold (tooling exists to avoid redrawing. And redrawing will break master compatibility)
- change spacing (use tooling duh)
- make italic
- make oblique (good tooling exists to avoid redrawing)

What are your thoughts? When to redraw font from scratch?

/Carl

How did you used to do interpolations without middle masters?

Ray Larabie — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 02:52:09 +0000

Not that long ago, before Glyphs, FontLab only allowed two masters per axis. For example, if you had a weight range between thin and black, you couldn't put a medium master in the middle. Rather than use MM interpolation, I used to use the blend tool, make manual adjustments to the interpolation, then subdivide and repeat. Nowadays, I can add as many intermediate masters as I want. So how did you handle it?

What is the South American "satillo" in shape and use?

Chris Lozos — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 06:50:41 +0000

I am adding the South American glyphs to a sans font and have never designed a satillo and am looking for advice from a native speaker.

Best practices for multi-script families

Tofu Type Foundry — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:31:52 +0000

Is it recommended to separate font families by script? I see some multi-script families choose to split into different fonts per script (Futura Latin, Futura Cyrillic, Futura Georgian) and other times everything is under one umbrella (Futura, which supports Latin, Cyrillic, and Georgian in the same package). I’m guessing the difference in vertical metrics of certain scripts is a leading reason behind splitting families. Alongside file size for web fonts, perhaps?

For those that do create separate families, do you include other script’s characters in that font? Example: Does Futura Arabic only contain Arabic characters? To type an English word would you need Futura Latin? Or are there some common characters that all scripts will include, such as a basic ASCII character set?

[I’m not actually discussing Futura, just using it as a generic typeface name]

What hobbies or activities do you do for a break?

Adam Ladd — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:04:55 +0000

When the tedium parts of the process set in, or your eyes and head are fatigued from concentrating on the screen and details for too long... what do you like to do to help 'reset' and refresh?

Just curious to hear and compare. I find I need to be off anything screen-related and do something more tangible or loose, like a bike ride.

Transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters

michele casanova — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 07:44:13 +0000

Is it reasonable to include two character variations (cvXX) in a font to transliterate Latin characters into Cyrillic and vice versa? Or is it just a waste of time?

I know there are numerous variations, but the ISO 9 table appears to be bidirectional; there seems to be only a case issue for ъ and ь.

Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms

michele casanova — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 08:27:48 +0000

Does it make sense to add elements from the "Half-Width and Full-Width Shapes" block (FF00-FFEF) to a font that doesn't contain Asian characters (Chinese, Japanese, or Korean)? When might these characters be useful?

Regarding the new Saudi riyal currency symbol

Peter Constable — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 00:12:02 +0000

Many people have noted that the Saudi Arabic Central Bank recently launched a new symbol to represent the Saudi riyal currency. Naturally, people want to start using it right away, and that has led to discussion about redesigning glyphs for an existing Unicode character, U+FDFC RIAL SIGN.

The existing Unicode character U+FDFC RIAL SIGN is not the same character as the new Saudi riyal currency sign, and font vendors should not create fonts that map U+FDFC to the Saudi riyal sign (in any design adaptations). There are several reasons why these characters cannot be confused, not the least of which is that U+FDFC is used to represent the Iranian rial. A new character for the Saudi riyal sign will be encoded in the next version of Unicode; the code point and character name will be included in the Unicode 17.0 Beta which will be available for public review in early May.

How much creative freedom in drawing currency symbols

mitradranirban — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 01:02:37 +0000

Saudi Riyal is the latest currency to get its own symbol
Surely it will be encoded in Unicode and many typefaces will add it.

My question is, how much creative freedom is accepted in harmonising currency symbols with rest of the letters?
I am planning to add a Rupees symbol ₹ to a blackletter font so I am interested to to know how much change in its design form is allowed without being unacceptable?
I like how $ symbol is modified for the look of the font or how Nabla depicted ₹ symbol to match its style

Top-heavy S

Alan Bernard Hughes — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:00:51 +0000

Where I live the main roads have been resurfaced recently, and the road markings repainted. I took care not to be run over.

mark on mark for Indic clusters

mitradranirban — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 09:56:57 +0000

I am trying to add Oriya letters to my Monospace font. I am adding Below base form as marks attaching to the base glyph . I have also added the same below-base-forms for base characters for attachment of vowel marks, just like mkmk works for Latin. But shaper is refusing to attach to the vowel mark at the anchor position below the blwf. Is it not allowed to treat a mark as a base for indic shaping?

Oblique interpolation and extrema points in DIN-style glyphs.

ok_locksmith_8414 — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:33:19 +0000

Many sources suggest that when slanting glyphs for italics or obliques you should add extrema points to the outlines for various reasons. Often, this requires adding extra nodes. However, due to the design of my typeface, I face a couple of challenges.

My typeface has a DIN like structure, so glyphs such as “O,” “o,” and “0” have flat sides instead of fully rounded curves.
My typeface contains both upright and italic styles in the same file, with the italics interpolated from the uprights via a slant axis.

How would I approach this?

I'm using Glyphs App by the way.

Tabular punctuation - to add or not to add?

Eimantas Paškonis — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 05:55:21 +0000

If values are aligned by right and have same decimal value, there's no need to tabular period, comma or currency sign. But that's not always the case. Is there a need for tabular punctuation and if yes - which ones?

Tips for Building a Thin Master from an Existing Black Weight

darkthrone — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 16:51:28 +0000

Hi everyone, I’m new to type design & fontlab and I have a question about building a font family. I’ve already designed the Black weight of my typeface, and I’m wondering — is there a recommended method, formula, or set of calculations for creating the Thin master from it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Why ascender can't use interline gap, but diacritics can?

Igor Petrovic — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 17:46:04 +0000

It is a norm that the basic Latin characters don't go beyond the em space.

And now I have a kind of typical situation in Black master. Lowercase /f and /i need more space (on the ascender side) for the hook and dot. I lowered the /f bar and /i apex a bit, but I still need more space.

Why is it a good idea not to go beyond the defined ascender here, if diacritic characters will do it anyway? Or I can go over the ascender a bit, anyway?

What is the preferred method of keeping kerning data in UFO format ?

mitradranirban — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 17:16:37 +0000

Should it be stored in kerning.plist file or in Feature.fea file in GPOS table?
Do both create GPOS data or data in kerning.plist is compiled in KERN table?
The situation is I have generated some kerning data in fea format. But I am editing the font in Fontra which presently only supports kerning in kerning.plist format. Is there any tool to convert between the two formats?

Capital Eng

scannerlicker — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 16:19:24 +0000

Hey, everyone!

I'm a bit confused with the formal aspects of the capital Eng (U+014A). So it has two forms, one based on the lowercase n, the other one on the uppercase N.

In previous typefaces, I'd solve this based on contrast: the j-like hook doesn't work very well with the N version with a high contrast, although it's still doable.

But on further reading, the preference of shape for one or the other seems to be cultural (according to wiki, Sami-speaking cultures prefer the the N-form, while African languages that use the Eng prefer a n-form (or rotated G, in some cases).

So, two questions: should these flavours be localized, or is any one of these forms intelligible?

Thank you in advance!

Texturing my Grafitti font in fontlab 8

Lorenzo Martinez — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 07:40:53 +0000

hi!

Does anyone here can help/ teach me how to add texture on my font? The texture is an svg file that I traced on illustrator.

when I try to paste it on fontlab 8, the texture just become a glpyh and not a texture on the glyph.

If it helps, these are additional context.
- my font file (.vfc) has glyphs that are not flattened for easier editing

- the picture texture is a combination of white to black, its a painting texture.

- the texture im trying to add is a picture I traced on illustrator. It's already vectored and saved it as SVG

- im on fontlab 8.4.2 (if it helps)

hoping someone can guide me. thanks!

OpenType Features documentation

Yves Michel — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 11:30:33 +0000

A client used one of my connected script fonts to write a book in the education domain. She’s a computer rookie and wasn’t aware of the calt and liga OpenType features present in the font.

My fault as I didn’t document this. The result was not without some inelegant connections between letters.

My question: how do you document your fonts about the features when you sell them through a distribution platform?

locl AZE, TRK, and etc not working

Tural Alisoy — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:21:26 +0000

I'm not sure if this "feature locl { sub i by i.loclTRK; } locl;" code works. For example, for Figma, even if I write "sub i by i.loclTRK;" under any stylistic code, I don't see it working when testing. Am I misunderstanding this or should it be?

Drawing quires of a manuscript

michele casanova — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 12:08:31 +0000

I'm doing some testing for a font that might be useful for visualizing the physical structure of manuscripts (something like VCEditor).

Given a manuscript quire, the curve for a folio might need to descend above the baseline (in the image, each horizontal line corresponds to one line of text). I'll also create a vertical element to connect these curves, but I'm interested in whether a vertical position of ±6000 would be a problem (the font has 1000 units per eM).

If I actually create the font, I plan to call it "Squinternato", which in Italian means both lunatic (for people) and broken down into quires (for books or manuscripts)

Design Guidelines for Non-Roman Monospace Typeface?

Daniel Yacob — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 17:16:05 +0000

Greetings All,

I'm hoping someone can direct me to any articles and blog notes that cover considerations when designing and testing a non-Roman monospaced typeface. I've found posts here that provide general monospace design guidelines, which are helpful. Still, I'm assuming that there are some additional, not-so-obvious, considerations to have in mind for monospaced text in a multi-script setting.

Invariably, the typeface will be paired with unknown monospaced Latin faces that the user selects. The primary utilization is assumed to be for software programming code, so working well with punctuation symbols is important. Should we try to optimize against a selected Latin monospaced typeface? Or try to strike a balance between the most popular ones?

Any notes from past experience would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

-Daniel

Type Design vs Type Engineering?

Russell McGorman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 19:48:54 +0000

I'd say there's a spectrum with "type design" on one end and "type engineering" on the other... But where does the design part end and the engineering part begin? Obviously there's more to it than metrics and OT features...

Are these enough nodes to draw up an oval with just 2 points? Nothing to do with hinting

AbiRasheed — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 17:43:13 +0000

I disagree and think it needs a total of 4 here's an image of what I'm talking about https://imgur.com/gallery/JbmJ9HE