Arctedo

Ofir Shavit

Early stage artdecorativish face. The whole thing started from the idea for the M' and from it to the N' and W' and the rest.
Have a lot of styling issues, but I'd like to get some feedback on it at this point, plus...
Does the M' W' work at all? 
Am I stepping on someone's foot here?

Thanks

Mike Wenzloff

In general like it. There are a few apparent (visual) inconsistencies in stroke weights. Dunno if they are real differences without pulling apart the PDF. the crossing of the /X seems off, the lowercase /x seems fine.

As for the M/W, if this were mine I might play with terminating the cross overs before they hit the stems.

Kinda reminds me of a Coquette eccentric relative.

Ofir Shavit

Thanks Mike!

I think I have fixed the X' strokes, made some other improvements and added cross bars to the O' G' D', I'm trying to maintain the closed-shapes aspect as with the W' M' for now.

The lowercase are still less developed.

Simon Cozens

Would it work to thin the top crossovers of the /w as you have with the corresponding ones on the /m? I think that would make it more legible.

That said, I have to work pretty hard to see the /m as an /m. Maybe a deeper cut on the vertex?

Chris D

Wow this is an interesting design. As much as I love the /M, I do read it as a /N at a small size. But I really like the experimentation. I wonder if widening the glyph might help distinguish it? 

A lot depends on the eventual purpose of the design too. Eg, if it's targeting larger display use only, then legibility at a smaller scale isn't the biggest thing to get hung up on. But you can never really tell where it will end up so you have to be mindful of all use cases too.

You may want to think about a system for the curved serifs, at the moment they seem a bit randomised. Check out Museo which is the gold standard for this style of design. Observe which characters use serifs, and which don't, and how many etc. Don't clone it, but learn from it

A last general comment about the lowercase letters - while the proportions of uppercase look good to me, I think the lowercase proportions might need reviewing. for instance, /u and /n are very different in width, and /p/q/b/d need more breathing room in their counters. But for an early draft it's fairly good.

Chris D

About /M too, maybe you can flip the /W design and use that as a base? It might be the square shape of it that's making me see an /N. Might also help resolve @Simon Cozens' earlier comment too.

Ofir Shavit

Thanks for the great advises Simon and Chris!

Flipping the W' to an M' doesn't work...


Widening it does, I think, as well as improving the serif system. 
My focus is still on the Uppercase guys

PDF attached.

Christian Thalmann

Humburger: an atheist's lunch.

Actually, I find the new /M more legible than before. The /M/M is particularly nice!

I'm not so fond of the many stylistic inconsistencies e.g. within and between /A/H/I/N/T, though. 

Ofir Shavit

Christian Thalmann said:

Humburger: an atheist's lunch.

When veganism becomes a religion that's true.

Guess I'll have to kill that I'...

Christian Thalmann

Ofir Shavit said:

Christian Thalmann said:

Humburger: an atheist's lunch.

When veganism becomes a religion that's true.

I was referring to the stereotypical expression «bah, humbug».    (Though apparently it's less atheist and more anti-Christmas in meaning than I thought.)

Yeah, the /I looks like it belongs to a Tuscan typeface. The asymmetry in /A and /H also strikes me as a bit contrived (I like it in /E). The /L could use a spur on the bottom left, and the thinning in /N doesn't match the handling of such intersections in other letters.

Chris D

I think the advantage with the new /M is that it has a more distinct shape, so it's easier to make out the unique shape of a word. (When we read, we don't read individual letters in a sentence one at a time l-i-k-e t-h-i-s, rather we see the overall form of a word and recognise it. The little differences in letter shapes help strengthen or dissolve those unique word shapes). You could also offer the square /M as a stylistic alternate.

It is your design though - so take it or leave it  

Ofir Shavit

Ok, that's where I am at with it now....


I feel that the k'w's' are too foreign among the lc, not sure about leaving it like this or normalising them, leaving the bagel knots on the uc only?

Christian Thalmann

I still find the inconsistency in the presence or lack of serifs in related letters irritating. E.g., why the three different approaches in /H? Why does /n get a spur and /m doesn't? Why are some spurs angular and others round?  Why do /k/p/q have serifless extenders when all others are serifed to some degree?

If this hodgepodge style is deliberate, you might even consider making a few contextual alternates to add more variability.

The /c looks dangerously like an /e. The /X/x feel more like /V/v or even /Y/y to me. The /T feels weak among the other capitals, maybe give it a serif or two on the crossbar. The /f/g feel lopsided.

Maybe the uncomfortable crossings in /k/s could be resolved by making the arcs larger, e.g. starting them on the baselines. I don't mind the /w, but I would lighten the «roof» a bit.

Ofir Shavit

The serifs system for the base of stand alone stems (like in r'T'i'f', not like b'd'u') is: Pointing left = square, pointing right = round. I find it working because the left side is absorbing the flow from the previous letter with contraction, and releasing the flow to the next letter with relief (round) to the next letter on the right. The upper serifs are all round unless they point down (with Z exception) 

Will consider all your other remarks, thanks!