Kaffeebohne Display

dennyshess
dennyshess Posts: 3
in Type Design Critiques
Hello everyone, 

My name is Dennys Hess. I'm a swiss digital interface designer currently based in Hong Kong. My job is it to create nice websites, apps etc. and I have a huge passion for typography. However, until now I was just using fonts to add personality, brand etc to my projects and always appreciated the craft behind it. 

I strongly believe that if you want to understand something you have to create it. This is why I want to make my own font and hopefully struggle as much as I can to see what makes great fonts great (not just in theory) and hope this insight will help me to pick fonts in a more accurate way and understand the nature of the design choices made by the type designer. 

In no means I'm a type designer, I'm a designer trying to make a font, used in large sizes. This is an initial draft and I would love to get some insights from designers with loads of experience in this field. 

Looking very much forward to some insights from you. 

Thank you very much!
Dennys

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Comments

  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,436
    Think about having the counters (interior white spaces) relate more. It's weird that /b/'s counter is wider than /o/'s, for example, or that /c/ is welcoming in a bunch of white space when other letters are shutting it out. 
    Modulation also needs more consistency. Your diagonal letters won't fit in if they lack the thins that all the other letters have. 
  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 792
    there are some serious flaws e.g. in a, e, c, k, s, v, w, y, x, z, they just won’t work that way. My recommendation: to study thoroughly some classical typeface first, (Bodoni, Didones), and then turn back to your draft.
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited February 2017
    You have two choices: follow the lead of mainstreamers and end up with something boring that "works", or think freely while maintaining self-doubt and end up with something some people will hate and some people will love.

    In either case you do have a lot of work to do, but first get your heart straight before it's too late.

    Dieu vomit les tièdes.
  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 792
    Hrant H. Papazian said:
    … follow the lead of mainstreamers and end up with something boring that "works", or think freely …
    That is quiet the sort of cynical attitude which does not help the beginner in any way.
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited February 2017
    I think encouraging beginners to think for themselves is the opposite of cynical; tellling a beginner that anything besides some classical model "just won’t work" is.

    For example that unconventional "w" above holds promise. In contrast, I'm with G. W. Ovink: "    Bodoni is an admirable letter for a death notice."
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,883
    The unconventional w is not a bad thing in and of itself, but its low contrast and major white space belong in a different typeface than the one it is in. It doesn't fit with the rest.
  • dennyshess
    dennyshess Posts: 3
    I love this forum! Thank you all. This discussion is great for me. Besides the question on conventional vs. unconventional, I will first have to solve the points which are more universally wrong = just bad type design. 

    Currently, I'm working on getting a better modulation into it and try to remove the very major mistakes which have been pointed out already. Hopefully I can give an update here and someone has a little bit of spare time to point me further into a better direction. 

    By no means I think I'm anywhere close so I guess I'll just keep trying and hoping that I can improve. 
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited February 2017
    > It doesn't fit with the rest.

    Sure. But I doubt that's why mainstreamers reject it.

    Sometimes a single glyph can expose a good path.
    See also:
    http://typedrawers.com/discussion/2026/type-idea-sketches
  • Beau Williamson
    Beau Williamson Posts: 80
    edited March 2017
    The 's' is another cool misfit. I was pondering the 'a' and wonder if matching the top terminal to the 's' would fix the 'a' and at the same time welcome the 's' closer to the font.

    And I would suggest squaring up the 'o' a little bit.
  • dennyshess
    dennyshess Posts: 3
    edited March 2017
    @Beau Williamson 
    That's a good input. I actually worked on some versions for the a and had this type of treatment before. Never really got it to work. I might take the s closer to the a/e/c now instead. 
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    I'm not sure having the bottom curve of the /a tangent to the vertical is what you want. You might want to move the control point to the left to let more light in. Conversely, you can try working with separate shapes for each element of the letter. This way you will have greater control over the pen logic of your design.
    The idea:

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