Freitag — toying around with a geometric display sans

Ofir Shavit

The nikud is not necessary and rarely used in "everyday's" needs but it is "trending", specially for logo designs (which is not such an issue to manually add by the designer) and sometimes preferred for religious scripts. I never planned to implement it in my font but I was asked to several times so I will, but my font is for text.

The Kaf can remain as is.

Final Mem is fine as a rectangle.

The Daled's right to the stem part is essential, but you can treat the connection with the vertical stem the way you did with the Zayin, and the radius can turn either to the right or left. 

Michiel Drost

If you have 'an inexplicable urge to draw a typeface' it is never redundant! That's what creativity is all about. The typeface will have your unique signature.

Christian Thalmann

@Ofir Shavit , how is this working? The circular /samekh and square /finalmem belong to SS01; the other forms are the default.

Ofir Shavit

Looking good.
The Ayin is great,
The circular Samech is better than the the curved one (it would work with your first Pe design but with the new Pe it stands out).
The Gimel's left leg seems a bit too thick.
I think that the dot under the Yod (The rightmost on the third row) should be lowered below the baseline, aligned with the nikud of the Alefs in the same row.
And I've never seen the strokes above the 3 bottom letters (I guess it is some biblical sign)

Christian Thalmann

Hi Ofir,

I've made a shield-shaped Samekh that I rather like. Does that work?


I currently have the circle and the square paired up in SS01, but I could also imagine matching the flat-topped forms (shield and square) together. What makes more sense?

As for /yodhiriq, all fonts on my computer seem to agree that the dot belongs right under the glyph:

Ofir Shavit

The shield Samech is fine.

I tend to think that the circle and square will match better, but it would be helpful to see some text, this for example:

איך מהססים נטוס מנומסים עם מסוממים נגד מסמורטטים הזקן חסומים שמחלף מסתובבים ושולחים בצרפת סים לדוסים על סם הסמים

Then go for it with the Yod

Christian Thalmann

Fair enough! 

Here's the geometric style:

And the more traditional one:

Thin weight of the latter:

Ofir Shavit

Well, now I think that the circle will fit better in the traditional version as you've suggested
The Yod can be a bit longer (it may seem like a mark or something when too short).
The Zayin's vertical stem can be shifted a bit to the left (it doesn't seems in the middle now because of the curve to the right).
and you can use this configuration for the Mem...

The current Mem seems a bit foreign (/n like), it will work in both versions but surely in the geometric one.

Ofir Shavit

And the Pe /פ seems a bit narrow to me.

Christian Thalmann

Thanks! Better?

Ofir Shavit

Yes, much

Christian Thalmann

Nice!

BTW, do I need a left-slanted Italic for that? I currently have a right-slanted version for use with the Latin, but I guess it makes more sense otherwise. Then again, I suppose I'd need special versions of punctuation marks to go with the Hebrew; that could be difficult.

How important is an Italic for Hebrew?

Christian Thalmann

I put together a Bēhance spread in the meantime.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/34249997/Quinoa-a-warm-geometric-sans

Ofir Shavit

You may say that Italic for Hebrew doesn't exist and is not in use. Italic style usage has developed culturally in Latin oriented countries but wasn't adopted and implemented in Hebrew since the revival of the Hebrew language at the beginning of the previous century.
It is discussed and being raised here and there and there is at least one serious attempt to add Italic to an Hebrew font (by Ben Natan see the slanted (to the left) versions. must also mention this font was his studies final project and it has no Nikud at all).
So there's even no standard for the amount of mixture of the Roman and cursive script versions, and this is an open field that relies only on Latin experience.

Nice to have at most

Christian Thalmann

OK, I'll keep my right-slanting Italics, then. I suppose they can be used to typeset Hebrew words embedded in Latin text. Thanks again for your all help!

joeclark

I think your zhe ж (especially lower case) is too wide.

Christian Thalmann

Thanks, Joe! Is that better? I compressed it more in the thin than in the bold.

Christian Thalmann

BTW, I've been thinking about experimenting with a non-connected geometric Arabic. How foolish an endeavor would that be...?  

Christian Thalmann

Here's an example of what I mean...
Though looking at it like that, I find the many almost-but-not-quite connected letters a bit forced. Maybe I should instead aim for a connected but still geometric design, like so:


Yeah, I think that's better...

joeclark

I think there is an interplay between Ж and Х that I, as a non-native reader, do not quite understand. Your semicircular and quarter-circular stroke forms may be leading me astray here.

Your У has a descender even in upper case (cf. Cosmos in Latin script). How are you treating Cyrillic Ү (as in Mongolian)?

Ofir Shavit

Christian Thalmann

Joe: Cyrillic /Y looks like the /Y in SS02, i.e., descenderless.

Ofir: Yeah, I've accepted that my hovering ‘ayn was too abstract and changed it in the meantime.  ;o)  That's supposed to be a ṣād rather than a ṭā, though... Meanwhile, here are my base characters. I guess I'll need some ligatures, too. Are vowel marks necessary?

Christian Thalmann

Alright, made some changes and added lam_alef ligatures. Do these work, or do I need the gamma-shaped form for the isolate?

In the last line, I'm experimenting with different designs for heh, hah, and dal. Do any of those work better than their counterparts? I'm currently preferring the left version for each.

Christian Thalmann

Sample text... I had to enter a few glyphs by hand, though; for instance, the /lam_alefFathatar-ar.fina ligature currently doesn't work automatically, and the flat /yeh-ar.fina alternate does not have OT code to support it. I hope I didn't screw up the text while trying to make it work!  

BTW, is it OK to use the horizontal two-lobed /heh for the medial form as well? I don't like how the vertical one turns out here.

Khaled Hosny

This final ح without the horizontal stroke look like a final ﮮ or some huge final ه. If it weren’t for it coming next to the other forms I wouldn’t have recognised it.

The first (left most) initial ح better, the same for the د.

Your initial ه can work for medial one as well, if you don’t mind it being bulky.

Unless this is a display typeface intended for large sizes, I’d at least double the size of the ء above أؤ etc. After all the hamza is the actual letter here and the base is merely its seat.

Christian Thalmann

Thanks Khaled!

I see what you mean about ح, I guess the horizontal is the most characteristic part of the letter. Pity; I really liked the big arc. ;o) I'll try to combine a smaller arc with the initial/medial form to make a more recognizable final/isolate.

Would medial and final م work better if it were a «hill» on the baseline like the initial form? Could the tail of the final/isolate form go straight down rather than first to the left?

Good point about hamza. Should all hamzas be so large, or only the ones in أؤ? Does it also apply to the alef with hamza below?

You told me about how ﻯ needs to be flat after some letters. Are there more such required substitutions? Or are all the 218 ligatures listed in Glyphs necessary...?

Christian Thalmann

Update:

Christian Thalmann

And here's a text on Quinoa picked from Wikipedia. There are at least two problems:

(1) The flat alternate of /yeh is not used automatically, which is not surprising, since I haven't made an active effort to implement it yet, and

(2) the /fathatan do not combine with their respective letters, which I do find surprising. Shouldn't Glyphs make sure those things work out of the box...?


(This is a screenshot from within Glyphs, BTW. RLIG and CCMP are manually activated.)

Khaled Hosny

I liked the old ح more, I’d try to add a curved horizontal stroke to it. The ي should be flat by default and only raised after toothed letters, namely initial and medial س and ص, and medial ب (and any other letter sharing the same base).

The new م is OK, but I liked the old one more. I’d even go with the centered circle for all the forms.

Khaled Hosny

In my opinion all hamzas should be large, too many fonts have tiny hamzas (and even dots) to the point that you can’t even till if that is a hamza, dot, a mark, or som ink blob (or dirt on the screen, no kidding I was once reading a text set in a font with so tiny dots that I’d often reach out and clean the screen to see if there is really some dot or if it is just dust).