draft display serif crit

Gumpita Rahayu

Hello everyone,

I'm Gumpita Rahayu, a freelance type designer from Indonesia. I'm new here, and actually this is my first post too. Recently I'm trying to developing on some high contrast fonts, the ideas was combining the stem and upper and lower serif to a bit rigid form and I decided to make the top and the bottom remain light for any instance but to do so it may cause the other instance looks similar and little bit weird.

This typeface has four weights so far: from light, regular, bold and extrabold, the instance weights not quite fixed yet and the lowercase and numeral is still under development. I would love to hear some feedback and critiques from all of you guys.

Thank you!

Chris D

I can see the overall concept emerging which is good, and there's some general consistency with the serif decision making. Some letters do need a lot of cleanup / attention eg. /G -but you can probably see that.

In saying that, just because there's a straight line in a design, doesn't mean it has to have a serif on it Some letters can be plainer in appearance, to help promote the interesting designs of others. For instance I would keep /D and maybe /U featureless.

It's all about harmony, contrast, & rhythm, and finding that magic combination unique to each concept. Looking at other classical serifs might help you out with the decision making.

I would also leave some letters looking a little rougher - The /X/Y/S look like interesting shapes that I would preserve. You want to ensure you don't strip out too much of the personality in the design that makes it what it is - but at the same time, create a cohesive system that isn't too erratic or distracting when reading.

One last tip, concentrate on getting one weight right first (eg Regular) before moving onto the others, so you can stay focused on the letterforms and not the interpolation too early in the process. I think Display has something good happening, I would personally work on that one for a bit.

Keep pushing it and good luck!