Gotham-inspired Sans Font?

Harry Wakamatsu

Hi, I'm an amateur font designer with several little hits on Dafont (though they're mostly display fonts). I'm working on my first attempt at making a multi-weight font.

This is yet to be named, so I would like some suggestions on that as well. The top is supposed to be Heavy/Extra Bold and the bottom is supposed to be Hairline/Extra Light. May I get some advice regarding this font's design (besides the kerning of the preview; it's still not been assembled into a font file)?

Ray Larabie

I think you need to assemble it into a font before you go any further. When you figure out the spacing, you'll be able to see more clearly what needs to be changed. The weight inconsistencies are pretty clear to me but maybe you'll be able to see them better when you print out for paragraphs and make notes. The G doesn't look like a G. Also consider that you'll eventually you'll be putting a comma accent under it. If you look at other typefaces, you might notice how the x-height for the light is often lower than the bold. I think you Extra Light could stand to be lower. Although the heavy W feels too heavy, I like the squareness of the it. Perhaps carry some of that squareness through to the lowercase w. It doesn't have to match exactly but right now they don't seem to belong to the same typeface. You ultra-light a & e seems to belong together. But in heavy they seem quite different from one another. But first things first: get that spacing done and start working with test words and sentences.

Michael Vokits

/B and /R conflict, and /P is missing (I wonder which of these glyphs it follows). /G and /Q, as much as I like them, are too informal to fit, as is /B. Also, I'd reconsider giving the UC descenders; you have the rest of the UC neatly into boxes, and the descenders would literally stick out with all or small caps. The top curves of /S and /s (and others) are too heavy. For that matter, you need a lot more optical compensation, even in the light weight – most of the joins are too thick and bulky. More than that, lines that are mathematically monoline paradoxically need compensation to look monoline. Heavy /X is quite nice, but light /X and /x are fugly, too obviously showing the offsets in their construction. Heavy /k makes me smile – I really like it! – but light is too... I dunno; too informal? And certainly too wide. (Er, its advance, not its weight.) Then again, /t does a similar trick, so I may be off base here. I also like how /y is formed on /u. The crossbars/arms of /F are too long. The curves of /n and its ilk are too bashful, slanting too much towards the stem. The joins of /n and /b and their ilk seem to occur at differing height at each weight – another illusion requiring compensation. /K is maybe just a touch too proud, advancing too far, to harmonize, but I'm not sure. The inner and outer curves of /D don't entirely match in the heavy. /V and /W don't have the same relationship to each other that /v and /w have - /W is compressed while /w isn't; and is /w wider than /W? (But I also like their squareness.) Light /Y advances too far. And is it just me or is /Q (and I assume the missing /O) leaning to the right?

In short, you have some very nice letters and a good sense of proportion, but there are some issues with color and harmonization. I think you'll have it sorted out in no time.

Austin Stahl

I think the /G is fun, but not having a more "normal" version available would probably be a dealbreaker for a lot of users.

Because your glyphs are the same actual width in both weights, the Light ends up looking a whole lot wider than the Bold. Which makes certain characters look weird, some more than others. Don't worry about what the actual widths are, just make 'em look right.

Harry Wakamatsu

I appreciate the critique a bunch! I've taken your suggestions into account and built the font's lowercase portion. Any more things I should fix?


Side-note: I tried interpolating on FontForge, but /h/w/x/y produced jumbled results. Any idea what's going on? I've posted this also on Stack Overflow.

Craig Eliason

Harry Wakamatsu said:

Side-note: I tried interpolating on FontForge, but /h/w/x/y produced jumbled results. Any idea what's going on?

I don't use FontForge, but it looks like the kind of result you'd get if your nodes weren't properly corresponding from master to master--e.g. if the related node on each master wasn't marked as first.

Jasper de Waard

I second what Craig said about the interpolation. 

This is actually really cool! A nice mix of modernist and humanist features, and some funky glyphs to stand out. The first thing I noticed is that the interpolated 'regular' looks perfect in width to me, but the extrabold looks too narrow, and the extralight looks too wide. Furthermore I recommend you use proper type design software (preferably, Glyphs, Fontal Studio, or RoboFont) if you want to make this into something truly worthwhile.

I don't really get the structure of the light v w and x, it's unnecessary. 

Get the basic things right, before you start focussing on details again. Don't stop here, though, keep it up!

Dave Crossland

 I recommend you use proper type design software (preferably, Glyphs, Fontal Studio, or RoboFont) if you want to make this into something truly worthwhile.

I recommend using trufont.github.io which is essentially FontForge's replacement, many of the key FF development community have moved their focus to it

Kemie Guaida

@Dave Crossland what? I completely missed this until now.

Michael Vokits

Craig Eliason said:

Harry Wakamatsu said:

Side-note: I tried interpolating on FontForge, but /h/w/x/y produced jumbled results. Any idea what's going on?

I don't use FontForge, but it looks like the kind of result you'd get if your nodes weren't properly corresponding from master to master--e.g. if the related node on each master wasn't marked as first.

Exactly this.

Harry Wakamatsu

Dave Crossland said:

 I recommend you use proper type design software (preferably, Glyphs, Fontal Studio, or RoboFont) if you want to make this into something truly worthwhile.

I recommend using trufont.github.io which is essentially FontForge's replacement, many of the key FF development community have moved their focus to it

I tried Trufont. It did nothing.

Dave Crossland

Harry, I assume you ran it on Mac OS X, where, when first run, it loads and no windows appear; you need to go to File, Open and open a UFO's metainfo.plist file

Kemie, I'll post a note about this on the ff mailing lists now