What do you hate to draw?

Max Phillips

Everybody loves to draw ampersands, right? You can have fun with the tail of the Q. And a lower case a, easy or difficult, is probably one of the purer examples of a typeface's character. But some glyphs are just a drag. My own pet peeve is the radical; it's seldom used in most typefaces, and it never looks nice to me. I always put it off to last. What do you hate to draw?

James Puckett

§. Never gets used in most type because most type isn’t used to write about legal matters.

Craig Eliason

The radical is an excellent nominee. IMO the section can be fun.
I find the tilde really frustrating.

Ermin Međedović

(Serif) eth from bold up. But at least we don't need .superior

Mark Simonson

I hate the eth, too. Its standard construction feels backwards (as in wrong-reading) and awkward.

It's too bad the Icelanders never adopted a convention like simply putting a crossbar on a lowercase d. It would even be logically consistent with the cap Eth.

Ermin Međedović

Croatd is the same pain in the weight, and need ascender serif amputations from time to time - just to look normal. I know, I have this letter in my surname.

Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
For some reason I hate drawing numbers. Spacing them is worse.

Drawing the eth is fun.

Jan Schmoeger

¤ I hate the louse. Useless bloody thing.

Max Phillips

James P, I had an ah-ha moment when I read your post, and immediately removed the § from the glyph set of a display font I'm doing. Freedom!

You hate figures, Jackson? To me, they're... dessert. But I've always hated, once I think I've got them right, having to go back and redo them for superiors, inferiors, and so forth. And who enjoys yanking the one around to make it wide enough for one.tf? Never quite works, anyhow.

Jan, I think we should petition the Unicode consortium to officially change the glyph's name from currency to louse.

Thomas Phinney

I'm not that great at numbers. But I hate the ampersand. It's necessary and useful, and I iike it in theory, but it usually gives me a lot of grief. I'll also agree with previous posters that the radical is another troublemaker. But my real nemeses are in other writing systems....

In cyrillic, the lowercase be (б) usually takes forever to get right.

In greek, several of the lowercase letters give me grief, but the delta (δ) is probably the worst.

James Hultquist-Todd

When I was working on Garvis, there were a few that I definitely wasn’t looking forward to drawing, the ȣ and ɣ come to mind right away.

In regards to a more standard characterset, I’ve convinced myself that I don’t like drawing the x.

Matthew Butterick

Italic parentheses.

Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh

My problem with numbers is they don't have any of the structure or rhythm of letters. They're a mishmash of curves and diagonals that don't fit together well.

Craig Eliason

they don't have any of the structure or rhythm of letters

I often feel that way about uppercase!

Göran Söderström

I often have problems with numbers. The letter K is also killing me now and then.

Nick Shinn

Bold Italic. (Especially tab figures thereof!)
Looking at font sales, this is the least individually-bought style.
Sure, people who actually use it will probably get it in the family pack, but I sometimes wonder if it really makes business sense to put so much effort into producing something most people who like a typeface enough to licence, won’t get.

Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

Diagonals take me weeks, k, v, w, x, y, z, you name it. They're either too thick or too thin, never the right weight. And my diagonal paranoia has made me see other people's diagonals as too thick or thin as well. Which makes me think, maybe there is no right weight and I'm too hard on myself. But then again… aaargh.

Robin Mientjes

I always struggle with the K, R, 4, 6 and 9. The combination of a diagonal and a curve or straight is just something I bump into all the time. I have this Didone work-in-progress for which I’ve redrawn the R so many times now that it seems like that is all it is: a mandala for zen buddhists seeking to attain enlightenment without the worldly attachments.

Of course, unlike a mandala, when I wake up the next day, I see my horribly-drawn R again. I need a script to just remove glyphs overnight.

Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

Bold Italic. […] but I sometimes wonder if it really makes business sense to put so much effort into producing something most people who like a typeface enough to licence, won’t get.

I've met graphic designers complain about Typejockeys' Premiera (comes in Regular, Bold, Italic, but no Bold Italic) for being 'incomplete'. Some even said they wouldn't buy it because it's just those three cuts. Reminds me of people who love to have a complete toolbox at home because they like the feeling of having options, but only ever use the Philips screwdriver because that's the only thing they can actually handle.

Sigh.

Typographers, on the other hand, seem to value other things in a typeface besides family size, beautiful small caps for instance, or various sorts of numerals, stylistic sets etc. I like to think that it's those people we design for.

Max Phillips

Bold Italic. […] but I sometimes wonder if it really makes business sense to put so much effort into producing something most people who like a typeface enough to licence, won’t get.

Somewhere, Oz Cooper is shaking his head sadly.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Mark Simonson

After complaining about the eth, I noticed that Twitter user @the_letter_eth uses a very bold one of mine in his/her/its profile picture. Nice that somebody appreciates the fruits of my frustration.

André Simard

Some letters give me some headache (eth,æ, &), but overall I don’t see any I hate to draw.

Alex Kaczun

There isn't a particular letter form that I have a dislike for drawing. In fact, the more difficult the shape the more challenging and enjoyable the task. I usually tackle the lower case 'a', 'e', 'g' and 's' first. I find extending the character set for all the European glyphs a tedious task. Kerning is probably my least favorite thing to do.

nickbbbbbbb

diagonal forms and numbers!

Lucas Leo Catalano

I always have trouble with numbers, but I wouldn't say I hate them, will draw numbers instead of doing the dishes if I had the choice. Letters that lead me to insecurity are 'B', 'R', 'K' and 'k' for their central parts. Also 'R' and 'Q' for their tails, something about the freehand nature of the tail that gets me confused, so much that their probably one of the first things I see in other typefaces to learn/judge.

Max Phillips

I usually tackle the lower case 'a', 'e', 'g' and 's' first.

Yeah? Me too.

There seems to be a vague consensus that angles are, broadly speaking, less fun than curves. Is there anyone here who flat-out loves drawing Xs and Ks?

Lucas, at first I read "will draw numbers instead of doing the dishes" as "will draw numbers instead of doing the dashes." And, come to think of it, dashes and hyphens are annoying, too. Easy, but boring, and seldom gorgeous even if you do them right.

Mark Simonson

There seems to be a vague consensus that angles are, broadly speaking, less fun than curves.

This may be partly because computer screen geometry is rectilinear.

The slanted sidebearings option in some font editors (Glyphs, RoboFont) help with this. What would be really cool would be tools (shape primitives, pens, selection tools, etc.) that behaved as if the whole grid space were slanted. Maybe even include optical corrections to compensate for the common slanting problems. Seems doable.

Jack Jennings

I wonder if k, x, y, w are less fun because they end up being more about managing the proportions of the counter forms, without having the flexibility or expression of a, e, g…

Craig Eliason

I also find /OE/ /AE/ and italic /ae/ frustrating.