The brief of Norse Sans is to be a comfortable read on displays, both body sized text and larger titles. Because of this I wanted the font to be neutral and sans quirks. That is also why I decided to keep the finials straight à la Helvetica. It's geometric nature gives each letter a nice extended width look, which I like. The wide side bearings helps the font to be breathable without the need to adjust the tracking.
My schizophrenic typeface borrows inspiration from fonts like; GT-Haptik, Futura, A2 Regular and Styrene.
My eyes have grown very tired of this font. And I'm super keen on hearing what you guys have to say about it!
Thank you!
Comments
The letter spacing is very tight, the proportions in both directions seem to play with juxtaposition rather than harmony, and neither grotesques nor geometrics are inherently known to have legibility as their strong suit. When the tight spacing seems somewhat appropriate for the heavier weight, it seems over-emphasised in the lights, thus changing the character of the type too much from geometric to grotesque as it moves towards the lighter weights.
Personally, I like the lowered horizontal emphasis in the caps, but the lowercase seems very undecided. In the heavier weight: Looking at terminals of l, t, a, j, f, y, r - it seems every letter tries to impress by itself with a new invention. The "less geometric" shapes in the lowercase, like in a, s, g seem uncomfortable, the s and S in particular having a bit of a backward slant. Optical weight compensation for u, c, x could be refined. The even stroke width in the round shapes could also need more horizontal weight to truly make them look even, to my eye they now have too much weight at the top and bottom. In the caps, many characters also have too much weight in the horizontal - too much, that is, if they are supposed to look even, instead of having a quirky base- and capline emphasis. Look at H or T or Z: The horizontals look heavier than the verticals. The numbers are part idiosyncratic, part too average geometric. The 3 looks squished on the bottom, 5 too wide, the 2 slants away to the right.
Getting bored with a typeface design is good. It makes you return to the project with fresh eyes
In general, the rounds in the lowercase are quite circular, but that gets lost in the caps, where the rounds are more condensed. Actually, the caps in general seem a bit condensed compared to the lowercase.
The numeral 3 and the lowercase el both seem like they come from some other typefaces, and feel out of place here.
@Thomas Phinney Thanks for your input as well! I will play around with the caps to make them less narrow (if I understood your feedback correctly).
The number 3 has been a pain to get right. I'll post an update when I finish it up
@James Montalbano I had a second look at the /a/e/g/s and I made some minor adjustments. Especially the /s spine got a well needed angle increase and it looks much better now. Thanks!
Here is a picture of some of the updated letters:
Thoughts?
Whole Alfie
the /m is too wide maybe ?
make U narrower (compare white space to O)
lowercase x looks topheavy
the t/ bottom left curve is weird, don't make it like the /l, make it a smooth curve also the same for the bottom of the /y
/B move crossbar up, or make top bowl stick out to the right more
make the tail of the /g more similar to curves in the /c and /e, make the curve go into the stem more fluidly .
crotch of /r could be deeper
if you're making a trendier modern font make the /z a tiny bit narrower
I'd really like to keep the low waist on the /R and /P because it's a defining element for the face. As for the /B I think I'll keep in the middle like @Nathan Zimet mentioned in an earlier comment.
James Montalbano said: I didn't expect to submit this to MyFonts or anything, it's a mere exercise for me. But it's nonetheless a exercise I wanted to take as far as I could. Starting over definitely on my to-do list. At the very least I will release it for free and use it on my portfolio if I deem it nice enough when it's finished.
I've learned a lot just by reading the responses here! Good learning experience.
Notable changes include:
Personally I find the instances to work really well. I've included the fonts on my own portfolio and it really looks looks decent on most screens. Non-retina screens included (thank you OTF hinting
When I experience that with one of my own drafts then I know that it isn’t worth any more trouble and I leave it aside, at least for a longer while.
Trust the wisdom of your belly, its the better brain.
Notable changes:
Here is a set of bold master after the updates
I still hate my /y, because it doesnt align with /f/l/t etc very well. And I have some design problems in general with the font because it looks like mishmash of everything, it lacks direction. But I guess that's bound to happen when I'm new to the game, and still learning lots.
/5 is way too wide. /7 is too wide too. /2 and 3/, on the other hand, are too narrow.
But that's just the numerals relatively to each other. Given that your letters are pretty wide (or at least some of them, such as the dominant /a), perhaps you should use the width of /7 as your reference point and adjust all other numerals to match /7.
- To normalize the extended-width. Meaning the typeface looks like an extended version but it's actually the 'regular' width.
- Went back to a grotesque design, reintroducing the double story /a.
- Killed of the hard turns, in favour of a more rounded look. (/y/j/t/f/l)
- Round punctuation, instead of square.
- Added more pronounced inktraps to give the charset more life.
- In general I think all the letters have been redesigned since last time I posted.
At this point it feels like I've designed 10 typefaces just to get to this design. Tiring, but educational. I will probably make minor adjustments depending on the feedback I get here, but the design principle will probably not change. Then I might as well start on something entirely new.
German always manages to make any font look nice, some screenshots from a webpage using Norse:
Thanks again all who added their 2 cents, sometimes more. I found this forum massively useful for someone who doesn't know anything about type design. Happy days.