Unnamed Sans (?)

Mika Melvas

Hi  Everyone,

I’ve been working on this typeface with wood type feel. I wanted to have this late 1800s early 1900s look on it with a touch of contemporary design.  I’ve classified it as a Sans but some letters are starting fall in to the Serif class.

I’ve worked on these two masters now but I haven’t decided how many weights the final typeface should have. Maybe three or max five. I want to keep this family quite small. I might do also Italics.

There is lot’s of work to do but I thought this could be the right moment to ask some advice and opinions.

I have a couple of questions:

Do you think that this is distinctive enough and worthwhile to finish?
Is there something you would like to fix or adjust on these letters (I’m sure there is plenty:) ?

Because the stems are so concave some letters are a bit problematic. For example /t and /s seems a bit light.
What do you think is there too much overshoot on the Black weight?

See the PDF for more samples and complete character sets:

http://mikamelvas.fi/media/unnamed_typeface1.pdf

-Mika

Christian Thalmann

Very pretty and smooth!

If you're worried about the /t being too light, consider giving it a «heel» on the left side of the stem where the foot starts. That will allow you to stay in tune with the flaring stem design of the other letters.

Satyr by Monokrom does it well:

Craig Eliason

I like it. Main thing to try is broadening the thin terminals throughout the boldest master to try to even out the color. /O looks a touch narrow to me too. 

Mika Melvas

Thank for these comments.

Christian: Thank you! That's a good idea. I will test that for sure. I feel like the /t is now too different without concave but that would definitely help.

Craig: Thank you! I'll broaden those and see if that helps.

James Puckett

I like it. But the massive x-height combined with the flared terminals and gaping apertures on S, a and e make it feel like those weird fonts ITC did in the 70s and 80s rather than wood type.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

I have to frankly say I don't think it's distinctive enough. For one thing it reminds me of Poppl Laudatio (especially in its condensed). It can serve as a learning exercise (which you might not need) or to fill out a library for loyal customers, but not much more. However finding a gimmick to make it distinctive is not something I'd recommend. The "R" is somewhat interesting, so maybe it can inspire something in the design as a whole. Or maybe Christian's "t" idea can be broadened to include more flaring overall.

BTW it seems your descender length is exactly equal to your ascender length. Although descenders do need more room to elaborate, they're much rarer in text; because of the risk of collision it's better to allocate more room in the Em space to ascenders. This doesn't apply to titling fonts, but any font used for multiple lines of text should bear it in mind. In fact there are very few fonts out there that break this "rule". More: http://typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/20535/#Comment_20535

Chris Lozos

The amount of taper to flare on the bolder one is much more successful than the lighter one to me. You might consider tapering a bit quicker on the lighter weight.

Johannes Neumeier

Chris Lozos said:

The amount of taper to flare on the bolder one is much more successful than the lighter one to me. You might consider tapering a bit quicker on the lighter weight.

To me the lowercase tapers in the light feel like the letters are "wearing heavy shoes", if that makes any sense? /r and /n have the shoulder at the top which gives detail, contrary to the baseline stem ends, for example in the "Printing" string. The bold looks like it has more internal tension, whereas the light feels more rigid. I'd be curious to see the italic!

Mika Melvas

Thanks everyone for your comments, suggestion and insights! And thanks Hrant for your honesty.

I take this back to drawing board and see what kinds of improvements I manage to do.