My first typeface (a student project), would like some advice

Jakov Jakovljevic

Hi guys, sorry for the same-looking .pdfs popping up over and over, I'm not sure how to properly present the progress, but I hope you can see the difference I've made the terminals on curved glyphs in the regular master wider, changed the capital sharp S, tweaked the cyrillic and other stuff. I'm taking a break from this for some time so I'd like some mild criticism to keep me vigilant. 

edit: now the lovercase sharp s in bold looks too fat. Too tired for backtracking.

Jakov Jakovljevic

So much for taking a long break
Also trying to bump the thread, so here are some a and g variants. Everybody here agrees that the two-story g is weird, but please tell me why in detail
I'm also considering a slightly different lowercase a, in a stylistic set maybe?
The J and j are also being reconsidered and ''softened'', with the uppercase J going decisively under the baseline. Accordingly, the leg of Л and л have been modified. Are the chopped-off descenders on p and q a good idea?

Jakov Jakovljevic

Jakov Jakovljevic

Christian Thalmann

The two-storey /g looks weird because it has an extremely thin wasp waist and is very narrow in general. You might also want to experiment with a lower ear closer to the x-height.

I like both of your two-storey /a, but the single-storey one bugs me. I think it might just be too symmetric, like a hand with a second thumb where the pinky is supposed to be.

I like the low-curvature versions of /J/j/Л/л, but perhaps seeing them in a text setting would be more informative.

The onstrokes of /n/m/r/p along the "wrong" diagonal continue to irk me. Might just be my problem, though.

I suspect your /ẞ (hidden in the attachment of your last post) might be too narrow to harmonize with other caps, but again, seeing it in a few words like RÜCKSTOẞDÄMPFUNG might help.  (<— The forum font seems to fail this test, incidentally.)

Jakov Jakovljevic

Hello, again. After a lot of obvious and ''under the hood'' improvements, including some preliminary metrics set up (edit: forgot to turn off optical kerning in the uploaded pdf, but the results are not too dissimilar), and also a very WIP regular italic version tossed together, this is the result, now in readable text form! Enjoy the workmanship!  

Stefano Costa

Hi, congratulations for the work so far. I'm just a type enthusiast, so take my comment with the due cautions: I think the /m is slightly unbalanced, the middle stem looks a bit too much to the right. Perhaps it needs a small optical adjustment, if I'm not mistaken.

attar

Not too bad. E is too narrow, W is too dark at stem joints.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Not too bad. E is too narrow, W is too dark at stem joints.

Although it’s always tempting to start looking at details, I would recommend to have another look at your spacing first. Spacing and the proportions of letters are inextricable connected to each other, as you know. Your spacing is pretty tight and results in gaps if the r is applied (difficult to circumvent completely) or in combinations like tz. Also the c produces gaps. A very tight spacing requires a lot of adaptations of the letter forms to get a more or less even patterning. The f is too widely spaced at the right side.

Sans serifs are derivatives of the archetypal models for roman and italic type, and they obstruct the stem interval by definition due to the lack of serifs. In comparison with their origins, sans serifs are hampered models.

Jakov Jakovljevic

Kind of random, but are some typeface styles more suited to tight spacing than others? Grotesques, for example? And also, here's yet another sampler Lots of tidying up, some cosmetic changes, and completed and overhauled metrics. PDF is exported correctly and there is no hinting, optical or any other kerning, just the metrics. On the left are the regular and bold versions, including an all caps preview, and on the right there's all of that, but with with stylistic alternates and old-style numerals. The second PDF is a Cyrillic sampler. Thanks for all the help so far.

Alexander Stetsiuk

Uppercase: something is wrong with the proportions? H (compared to N width), U, M and O is too narrow. C (compared to O width) is too wide. R (compared to P): top part is too large.

Christian Thalmann

Is there a particular reason why you're pairing a two-storey /a with a single-storey /g and vice versa?

Jakov Jakovljevic

Thanks Alexander. I will try to tweak things out and see where it goes. Christian, there is no reason really, other than the fact that, for now at least, two-storey g is the stylistic alternate, and so it's lumped together with other alternates in the OT feature class.

Jakov Jakovljevic

Ok, before I decide to show the standard improvements, and inspired by Christian's enthusiasm to work on his geometric Greek, here is a (gasp!) Greek text sampler. I said I was going to refrain from doing Greek, but I've done some research, while also trying to get a consistent look and feel to complement the other two scripts (both of which are used in my country). I don't have any overzealous ambitions for this project, it's just very fun to learn new things as you add new glyphs to the typeface Here's a chunk of Greek dummy text   

Michiel Drost

The lowercase g looks awkward.

Jakov Jakovljevic

Ugh, I've heard that one before, Michiel Still clueless on how to fix it, though, any advice? 

Michiel Drost

Yes, I would make the gap between the top bowl and lower bowl smaller.

Jakov Jakovljevic

Hello, guys. Since my last post, I've made some slight changes to some letters' proportions, and also out of hesitance and the fear of messing up the metrics in my FontLab file, I adjusted the tracking in the .pdf file by +15 for regular and +10 for bold. Looser spacing does seem to suit this typeface better. No news on the two-storey g yet, sorry. Again, mostly minor cosmetic changes, before plunging into...well, kerning, I guess. Any thoughts?

Jakov Jakovljevic

Could I ask for some more feedback?