Hello all,
Have been hard at work trying to learn the art of type design and I'm wondering if I could ask for some feedback on my first typeface. The intent is to design a simple (but complete) sans serif with just a hint of personality. I have been staring at this thing for almost six months and have asked for some feedback from the folks at Typophile, but was hoping for more.
Your thoughts, insight and input are much appreciated.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1120692/MD_Seedling.pdf
Comments
Your widths are also unresolved; many letters have the wide geometric proportion of Gotham and do not fit in the grotesque proportions established by H and O. I think you need to spend more time looking at how the proportions of grotesque and square sans faces work and then devise a working system of widths for your design.
@Mekkablue Well that's embarrassing.
Also reviewed character widths throughout and made some small adjustments to the a, c, e, h, n, s and u.
Better? Worse? Same?
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1120692/MD_Seedling_v2.pdf
The bowl of the Thorn should look more like the P. Macron feels low. Lowercase i and j dots don't align.
http://66.147.242.192/~operinan/2/2.11/index.htm
The ogonek doesn't seem to relate to other letters. Compare with c.
http://www.twardoch.com/download/polishhowto/ogonek.html
Cap aligned brackets sometimes work but just make sure they look good (in) (lowercase) (especially) (in) (words) (which) (start) (with) (j) (and) (end) (with) (f) (.)
Never superscript (C) and (R). Copyright messages are often tiny already which would make your symbols microscopic. TM is too tiny too.
Ray, I disagree. I believe the ® should be superscripted. It indicates registered trademark, not copyright, and so is equivalent to ™.
The © is generally used in-line as part of a copyright statement and is not superscripted. The ™ and ® are generally applied as adjunct marks at the end of a word or phrase to indicate that the preceding is a trademark or registered trademark and are generally set superscripted.
There are differing opinions and standards, as seen in the range of treatments in professional fonts. (Lucida Grande, here, for instance, if that’s what you’re reading this in. ;-)
℗ (uni2117), on the other hand, is an analog for ©, used for a performance copyright, and should also be set on the baseline, figure-height generally.
It's a better idea to put a superscripted glyph in the superscript feature.
@typodermic - those links on drawing the thorn, eth, and ogonek are so informative. As I am unfamiliar with those diacritics, I was trying to emulate based on what I saw on various materials I found online. It's so much better to understand what they are and how they're supposed to be drawn. Thank you for the lessons.
@kent @james and @nickster great info on ®, ©, and ™. I'm more inclined to superscript the ® and have a full height alternative. For me, it has always been rather annoying to have to 'manually' superscript a ®.
@nickster I never thought of it that way, but as soon as you said it, I can totally see what you mean. I feel like I went from 0mph to 100mph very quickly with this first attempt and I'm still trying to understand how to drive! Great advice - thank you.
I don’t know why folks insist on lumping these two together. As I tried to explain, although they look similar, they have distinctly different uses that occur in different typographic circumstances.
Yes, © and ℗ = full-height (generally figure height), on the baseline. But ® and ™ are typically superscripted.
If you mean footnotes in books, Nick, most editorial style guides that I’m familiar with actually eschew the use of either mark — ® or ™ — in texts since there is no legal requirement and they just add clutter.
If you mean the fine print in advertising and such, then yes, I suppose if you’re designing an all-purpose sans serif that you intend to be used for such legal disclaimers, then you should design the ® and ™ larger. As James pointed out, they’re often made too small. (But I would still make them nominally superscripted).
But that’s just me.
Don’t get me started on ordinals—I am thinking of putting full sized characters in the Ordinal feature to counteract Word’s twee 17th century affectation of superscripting “th”, “rd” and “st”.
Still, a quick scan through the professional fonts installed on my machine show that while ™ is always superscripted, ® is evenly divided between superscripted and not. So I'm prepared to concede that reasonable type designers can differ on this point.
I also wonder whether it has something to do with different practices in different countries. They are, after all, legal marks, so the usual practice in the US may be different from Canada, or the UK, etc.
AFAIK, the scale of these symbols is more a matter of tradition and habit than strict statutory mandate. For instance, under US law, the © symbol is one of several options in a copyright notice.
Some recent FB fonts have included registered.alt — informally known as “Big ®” — to provide the user the option. (Come to think of it, that might be just Cyrus.)