Caster (serif, for text, multiscript)

Nathan Zimet

Hey guys i'm at it again with another text font that will take a year to finish and sell 2 licenses 
Will most likely stick with the name Caster, unless you guys have suggestions
This is the caption master, intended for 6 point text.


Are these vertical metrics ok? I made the total height 1000 upm because Adobe fonts do that, but should I make them go farther up and down so nothing is clipped?


Attached is a pdf with running text !

What do you guys think?

Craig Eliason

For a caption weight, I would consider opening up the apertures of /S/s/. Sidebearings might generally be a touch too tight for that size too. And I would be inclined to forego all the rounded corner details on caption master too, but I concede that distinction might be literally imperceptible. 
Should the period be a smidge bigger?
Mid-line head serifs (/i/j/m/n/p/r/u/) pop up a little to high to my eye.

Christian Thalmann

I really like the organic lines, chunky texture and down-to-earth stability of this. Reminds me of Mrs Eaves. Would be a pity to hide it in tiny captions!

«Caster» as in spellcaster? It does have a bit of a fantasy flavor to it.

The current weight strikes me as a bit dark for comfortable reading, at least in the PDF. It looks great up close.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

How are your vertical proportions across the scripts?

Samuil Simonov

I find the shape of /a at odds with the rest of the font. Every other curve in the font is smooth and elastic, but the belly of /a has a couple bends that look like they won't disappear if the tension is released.

I can say the same about /и. It matches well with /a and looks great, but looks a bit out of place next to /c, /e, /м.

/ф looks a bit boring, the middle of the stem is too uniform in thickness. /l feels more alive.

Overall I like it a lot, looking forward to that /ю

Nick Shinn

I think you would be better off working on a sans. Serifed fonts are not very popular, as you predict, and this one seems to cover no new ground.
  
But if you are determined: What does Caster introduce that does not already exist in, say, Zapf International? (In the basic alphabetic design, not language support or OpenType features such as figure alts.)

Certainly, it is original, but not enough—because, in sans faces, people are more attuned to the significance of subtle differences, which they just don’t see in the old-fashioned serif genre.

Now you might say, serif fonts will come back into fashion; but that won’t help typefaces designed premature to such an event, should it happen. Timing is everything when it comes to trends.

On a positive note, bravo for doing size-specific variants—that is a saleable feature, especially if embedded in the hot new format of OTVar.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Any updates on this?

Nathan Zimet

I changed the font according to your guy's suggestions, added latin small caps, and rounded out the cyrillic charset more, but other than that no

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

How are your vertical proportions across the scripts?