The letter S

Ben Blom

For me, usually the most time consuming part of designing an “S” (as with other glyphs), is a process of stepwise refinement, a tweaking again and again. I keep the steps, so I can revisit them if needed. The image below is an example of a part of such tweaking. (In this example, I coordinated the terminals of the “S” with the terminals of the “C”.)

Michael Jarboe

I've found it helpful to work through characters such as /a, /g, /s soon after, or in parallel with /H, /O, /n, /o in both extremes before proceeding.

I use straight segment spines now, which I feel offer more control in my experience. The segment can be really short or relatively long, and the sides don't have to be completely parallel, depending on the type style, allowing subtle tapering.

Interpolates well even between great extremes. You can interpolate between a tapering short segment in black weights, with a longer, completely parallel segment in Hairline or Thin (with a regular weight master in-between).

Even in black weights I've found if the segment is really short and tapered it will not disrupt the curvaceousness of the form and you can visually match the same glyph without a straight segment.

Thomas Phinney

I do the opposite of Frode’s approach. I leave off the nodes from the spine entirely, and do all my spine manipulation with the nodes on the vertical parts of the top and bottom bowls, until very late in the game. I find this gets me much more usable spine shapes.