Freitag — toying around with a geometric display sans

Christian Thalmann

Latin caps, lc, smallcaps, figures, and Cyrillic done.

Samuil Simonov

The more I look at /El-cy and /Em-cy the less I like them together.

Christian Thalmann

Samuil Simonov said:

The more I look at /El-cy and /Em-cy the less I like them together.

Hmmm, I see your point. Maybe I should make a triangular version instead?

Meanwhile, here's some Greek:

Craig Eliason

Is your Greek ascender line the same as Latin? I wonder if it should be lower. I mean I get that tall ascenders are a starting premise for this face, but Greek ascenders are mostly much more complicated than the simple stems of Latin /b/d/h/k/l/, so that letters with them wind up even taller looking. 

Kent Lew

Your epsilon looks a little anemic. You don’t have to much room to work vertically, but I would add horizontal weight to the two curves to get enough oomph.

Christian Thalmann

@Craig: Hmm, interesting idea. I've already reduced the ascender height in the Cyrillic since the ascenders tend to stick out like sore thumbs there. I suppose I could do the same to the Greek.

@Kent: I see what you mean, I'll give it a try.

Thanks!

Christian Thalmann

There you go: Shorter ascenders, stronger /epsilon.

Craig Eliason

Are the bottoms of your zeta/xi/terminal sigma based on precedent? 

Christian Thalmann

Craig Eliason said:

Are the bottoms of your zeta/xi/terminal sigma based on precedent? 

I just looked around a bit on MyFonts, and it looks like all typefaces either have (1) a backward-tilted tail and/or (2) a curved join with the «horizontal» (which is often sloped downward too).

There are only rather few examples of sharp joins, one of them being PF DIN Pro, which is by a Greek designer but probably rather controversial — it has the domed /lambda, for instance.

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/parachute/pf-din-display-pro/

Thanks for pointing that out, I'll try out a curved tail (I'm not sure whether a tilt would look right). It's a pity we don't seem to have any native Greek users here willing to give a few hints...

Christian Thalmann

Rounded off those tail joins. They're still not very distinct from the full descenders, though. Maybe I should try out a bit of tilt after all.

Samuil Simonov

I actually like the look of angular tails more, but that must be my Cyrillic taste speaking (җқңҳҵцҷщ).

Nathan Zimet

I personally think the curved tail of the /zeta /xi and /sigmafinal match the tail of the /alpha /iota and /mu and fit in better than the cut one.
Also: for a geometric sans, the design of the alpha is unusual, it could look more like your /a. The curving of the gamma could work if you curved the inside too. The top left of the delta you could try making a corner, like the top of the zeta,or having the tail curve back down?. For some reason the left leg of the eta seems thinner than the right leg (just me probably). I'm not sure about the kappa, you could keep that as an alternate and try a more typical form. The nu and chi have noticeable ink traps but the lambda does not and maybe mu and ro might benefit from one too depending on how much stroke modulation you're allowing. Also you could try the non-ascending form of phi as an alternate, which seems more popular in geometric sans fonts.

Here's some screenshots of mostly geometric sans fonts from the myfonts sans bestseller and a quick search of "greek sans" for reference.

Christian Thalmann

Hi Nathan,

thanks for all the feedback! Meanwhile, I've also tilted the rounded tails a bit. I gotta say I prefer those characters this way; they seem to have more identity now with respect to the full-descender characters.

I've finally committed to a straight /gamma (the curved one has always been bugging me) and added some optical correction in /lambda and /mu (at the expense of some geometricity). The /eta's right stem is indeed a bit wider than the left one; I inherited that from /n, which my eye insists needs that extra weight due to the curved-away top half... for the /eta, I've now reduced the stem width a bit since the descender gives it more presence.



Yes, I've seen more /a-like alphas in many other typefaces... I changed to this version as a reaction to Gerry's (vague) edict that my glyphs weren't Greek enough. I actually quite like the current version.

Deltas with spiky top left corners are a thorn in my eye; I'd rather stick to the round version. Curving the stroke end back down is an idea to consider, though space is already quite cramped up there in the Black master. I do like the way the horizontal ascender bar resonates with those of /zeta and /xi.

As for non-ascending /phi, I find that's a very chirographic design that tends to look forced in geometric sanses. Unless there's a problem with the current ascending one, I'll stick to that.

The /kappa follows my design for /k, which is one of the defining features of Quinoa. Do you think I can pull it off? Chirographic /kappa seems to allow for quite a few architectures, including some that look like a Swiss school script /x...

Thanks for the gallery! Is it just my impression due to lack of familiarity with the script, or do those Greek fonts borrow from each other more heavily than the Latin ones? Is innovation so frowned upon in Greek, or is it just that those are designed mostly by non-Greeks who don't dare stray too far from the established paths?

Christian Thalmann

For some reason, my exclamation and question marks were ascender-tall rather than cap-tall like in virtually all typefaces. Took them down a notch.

Incidentally, I'm not too happy with my Heavy quotes:

It looks like they're dancing about. It was even worse before I slightly displaced them vertically against each other. I'm wondering whether I should displace them further, maybe until the top and bottom edges line up with each other (but which would make the whole glyph rather tilted), or maybe break the congruence with the comma and cut the tops and bottoms horizontally (which is what Futura does, for instance).

Christian Thalmann

Hmmm, I like the horizontally cut quotes. I wonder whether I need to adapt my commas accordingly, though. Currently they feel a bit at odds with the quotes.

Christian Thalmann

And here's the non-traditional, more geometric style:

Christian Thalmann

Meanwhile, started with the Arabic. Wow, it's even more vertically crowded than I remember.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

It's only crowded if you put it in the Latin vertical straightjacket.

There are some writing systems that can survive that (if only in a display font) but many go crazy.

Craig Eliason

For the comma/quotes, would there be any use in using horizontal cuts only on one end of them?

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Since you're no prisoner to precedent, I would suggest:

Christian Thalmann

Yeesh! Precedent or not, that just feels several kinds of wrong.

Christian Thalmann

Craig, I had given that a try before settling on a doubly horizontal cut. It looks interesting, but too funky for Quinoa:


Even the horizontal solution looked a bit agitated to me, so I reduced the slant. I think that's better now. Think I can get away with the comma being different?

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

I think the horizontal cuts are fine, but in my trial I was addressing two things: the double-quotes looking like a unit; and the close quotes not being confusable with the apostrophe. Maybe the former is making the result too dynamic, but I think the latter is still achievable.

Making the comma different seems problematic in such a display font.

Jasper de Waard

Actually I think the different comma works just fine. It might be, though, that the comma is used as a base quote by some users.

Also, in I'll and he'd the apostrophe looks odd. Maybe place it somewhere in between cap and descender height?

Christian Thalmann

Jasper, I've had that impulse as well, but is there precedent for apostrophes between cap and ascender height? I'm under the impression that everybody uses cap height. I might be wrong, though.

Christian Thalmann

Here's an experiment with mid-high quotes. I find the effect rather unsettling, especially in the /“M/ combination.

The horizontally cut comma works well, though.

I'll probably stick to the cap height. I suspect it's one of those everyday things that start to look weird if you stare at them too much.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

These are all fine. But a lost opportunity.

Craig Eliason

The underlying problem here is that the ascenders are just too high, but I don't expect I'll be able to talk you out of them.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Surely that's part of the character of this –display– typeface, and the quote marks being hard to reconcile should not scupper that.

Craig Eliason

To be clear, I don't think the ascenders are too long because they make the quote placement more difficult; I think the ascenders are too long because they look too long! 

I suppose for display typefaces, a question to be asked is how much utility do you gain through abnormality ("This detail is something different!" "This has some personality!") vs. how much do you lose ("This detail is bothersome!" "I don't get what this is!"). 

To my eye, the ascender height could be happily dropped a little bit and still retain a sense of long ascenders—I'm not advocating complete normalization, just a dialing back of the Dunhill Effect.™