Eau de Garamond — a sans distilled from the essence of Garamond

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Comments

  • You should definitely publish that! :grimace:  I feel like it would fit right into Nordvest, what with all those horizontal stresses...
  • BTW, does anyone know whether /KaiSymbol is supposed to be cap-high or sc-high?
  • Hmmm, maybe the Montgolfière-type Omega is actually better... maybe less interesting on its own, but plays better with other letters.

  • Nathan Zimet
    Nathan Zimet Posts: 76
    edited June 2018
    You can have the file if you want idk what i'd use it for
    Here's some references you could use:
    http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/andreas-stotzner/andron-1-gre-corpus/
    http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/joanna-sans-nova/
    http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/storm/baskerville-original-pro/
    https://software.sil.org/gentium/
    https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/gfs-elpis
    i was looking monotype garamond and garamond premier for reference for mine but they both use horizontally stressed contast
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,433
    BTW, does anyone know whether /KaiSymbol is supposed to be cap-high or sc-high?

    I think there are both upper and lowercase versions, and I’d guess the starting point for scale would be the two kappas but I’m not sure. 
  • Thanks! I usually don’t get much out of unannotated references, though; I’m not interested in copying other people’s work and prefer to find my own solutions wherever possible. I much prefer feedback on which of my own designs  work and which don’t! :)

    KaiSign: I’m aware of the case distinction, but the cap version looks quite small in many fonts. 
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    Hmmm, maybe the Montgolfière-type Omega is actually better... maybe less interesting on its own, but plays better with other letters.


    I think it's more interesting on its own! It looks harder to get it right, and any shape hard to get right is inherently interesting, don't you think?
  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 1,967
    edited June 2018
    Tried one of those zeta-like xis. I don't like the shape on its own, but it seems to play along with the others reasonably well.
       
  • How's the Italic? A bit too crowded maybe? Or does it just look that way because the words are longer?


  • Looser sidebearings for the Greek; better IMHO.


  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,433
    edited June 2018
    I still think the Greek extenders feel too long. 
    Did you try out the still-more-cursive form of kappa?
  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 1,967
    edited June 2018
    I still think the Greek extenders feel too long. 
    Did you try out the still-more-cursive form of kappa?
    Is it common to make the Greek extenders shorter than their Latin counterparts? That feels wrong to me somehow. I can see the point of the shortened phi and psi in the Roman, but it looked weirder in the Italic (with the cursive phi), so I made the descenders full-depth there.

    The super-cursive kappa sort of depends on two loops to avoid just looking like a и. I'm not sure I can pull that off within Ysabeau's rules. I like sort of implied loop that the current gamma has, but I'm not sure that would be good enough here...

    BTW, I gave eta a more idiosyncratic cut in the tail and added some positive kerning for cases with two adjacent descending stems:


  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,433
    edited June 2018
    Is it common to make the Greek extenders shorter than their Latin counterparts? That feels wrong to me somehow. 
    I don't think it's common but it is done sometimes (to good effect IMO). Here's Maiola by @Veronika Burian:

  • Those are pretty letters, but they look a bit like they’re from different fonts to me. The phi is surprisingly wide, too, and the theta tiny next to it. 
  • Michel Boyer
    Michel Boyer Posts: 120
    Concerning relative widths, here are psi, phi and theta from John Hudson's SBL Greek

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,126
    edited June 2018
    The SBL Greek theta is quite narrow because it follows the renaissance model reasonably closely in this regard (as does the egg-shaped phi). Here are the relative widths in the Brill, which I think are better as a general approach for most styles of Greek type.
  • I made my upright /theta much narrower, and you're right, it's a better fit. I've also made the bowls of /phi and /psi marginally taller than the /o; I feel like the impaling stem is reducing their visual size. Does that work?

  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 1,967
    edited July 2018
    First experiments with a Black master. I rather like the lowercase, and don't mind the caps alone either, but those currently look too heavy with the lowercase. I guess I'll lighten them a bit. (Actually, they could probably also use a bit more contrast...)



  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,433
    Given their length the extending strokes may need to be cheated thinner so the don’t read as too dominant. /g is too fat bottomed. /R out stroke feels like an outlier. 
  • Yeah, lighter and more contrasted capitals are better. I also lightened the ascenders and the bottom of /g. Kept the long-tailed /R for now; it's a signature letter of the typeface... in fact, it looks more extravagant in the lighter cuts — I'm wondering if I can get away with a longer tail in the Black...
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    I like it!
    /g is so sexy :smile:

    I'd keep current /R, you're already paying a price in the spacing department as it is.
    Speaking of which, spacing between capitals and small letters is too loose (look at Naranja, for instance).

    Top half of /S looks more contrasted than bottom half.
    I don't like the way the ear of /r leans down. It's in contrast to the overall SW-NE stress.
  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 1,967
    edited July 2018
    Yeah, I'm not going for a space-saving typeface; rather, I want Ysabeau to retain the generous stride that makes Garamond so pleasant to read. Of course, this sort of reasoning breaks down when talking about the Black master, but it should still retain the feel of the Regular.

    I see what you mean with the caps. I spaced them to look good amongst themselves:
    But I guess all-caps settings are less important than mixed case. Didn't there use to be an automatic OpenType feature in Glyphs that added extra space in all-caps settings? I don't see it in Ysabeau...

    Should I just add kerning between a wall-faced capital and a round lowercase letter...? Feels weird, but I could see it doing the trick.

    I'm less certain I know what you mean with the /r/'s ear. It is thin on the way up and thick on the way down, as it should be in diagonal stress... Anyway, I lowered the contact point with the stem a bit; maybe that addresses what you meant.

  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    Yeah, I think new /r solves my problem. Can I see it in context?
  • Sure.

    I added kerning for /H/o and similar pairs; seems to work. I also added a top stroke to the /one, since the single-stroke design just doesn't parse in non-obvious contexts like «H1». It's a little less Garamond now, but still an improvement IMHO.

  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    /r works much better now, in my opinion. Maybe it could benefit from a tiny bit lighter ear (just pull the bottom outline up, without changing its angle or curvature).

    From looking at Marius, Naranja, and some other combinations, it seems spacing between capitals and small letters is still too loose.

    As for /1, can you show the previous version? I'm just curious. Anyhow, I'd consider making the top stroke more horizontal, and perhaps push it down a little, without changing the height at which it's trimmed, so that the horizontal segment would be shorter. Can't promise it's going to work, but I think it could help it look more Garamond. Not sure it's not going to clash with /4, though.

    /3 could use more weight (and maybe be wider).

    The vertical stem of /4 is terminated at quite a steep angle. Maybe too steep?

    No /6?

    Did you do something with /S? The bottom half still looks a bit less contrasted, don't you think? Look at the diagonal middle part, for example; it's its bottom outline is more curved than the top one. Do you see what I mean? It makes it look a little imbalanced, I think.
  • The six happened not to appear in the actual time and date when I wrote that! :grimace:  Here are the updated numbers:



    As for the /S: You're right, there was something off with it. The horizontal thickness was 10 units wider on top than on the bottom, and the curvature of the counter was different. Here's the new status now. The bottom is still a bit heavier than the top so it will «sit» comfortably, but the spine should be more balanced now. (The outline in the background is a 180° flipped copy.)


    I don't think the caps in Marius and Naranja look too loose now — they do need a bit of extra air to make up for their bulk, IMHO.
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    Great, I really like it! Too bad I'm not a graphic designer and have no real use for this (or any other) font :(
    Do you update it live on Github or how does it work?
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,433
    The /t/ looks really short when next to an ascending or tittled letter. 
  • Ori: If you ever write documents or letters, you have use for a text font. :grimace: Yes, I keep the GitHub repo up to date, though I haven't exported the new heavies yet, since they're not complete enough yet to be functional.

    I'll have to rethink the weight spectrum at some point anyway; I'll probably move the Bold instance a bit above the middle master. I currently have 12 weights per cut, which seems excessive. Then again, the stroke width goes all the way down to 10 units, so there certainly is enough conceptual space to cover. I also want to provide some sufficiently fine sampling around the expected text weights to allow people to pick something they're comfortable reading. (I suppose I should export a variable font for that purpose, though.)

    Craig: I'm quite fond of the low /t of Garamond and how it recalls the almost x-high /t of the Carolingian. It did look a bit extreme in the Black, though. I raised the apex a bit; is this better?


  • When I regard /a/c/e the straight and round verticals are looking a little bit unbalanced to me. Especially /a and the very heavy /c.