Letterink – Stroke extension for Glyphs

Filip Paldia
Filip Paldia Posts: 43
in Type Design Software
The extension allows drawing letters with a centerline – skeleton. The stroke is literary drawn by a nib led according to a skeleton. Letterink advantage is the ability to vary nib width and angle on the same skeleton and keep those variations while changing general nib preset for a master. Moreover, the stroke is rendered into a glyph as if it was an outline. This allows the designer to use strokes without the direct necessity to expand strokes to outlines.

Expanding to outlines generates clean vectors without messy points. Or, at least in most cases, it does so. The remaining cases are going to be fixed.

Currently, its possibility is narrowed to the simple pen simulated by abscissa. But, the results are more than promising. Watch the demonstration on the video.



The project was part of my diploma thesis to research the possibilities of the skeleton type design. I am looking for the way how to publish the outcomes – blog or a book.

The development of the Glyphs extension was managed by Martin Cetkovsky. Currently, we have released Letterink as a minimum viable version to proof the concept. Hence, In the future, we are planning to integrate more advanced shapes like triangles, rectangles, polygons or ellipses plus their combinations.

If you are working on a calligraphic project or studying typeface construction, it is worth, to give it a try. We have already received convincing feedback out of the testing non-latin typefaces especially Arabic, Hangul and Devanagari.

You can get the plugin at letterinkapp.com. 
We are looking forward the skeletons outcomes and your feedback.
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Comments

  • duncanmajor
    duncanmajor Posts: 11
    I'm not a type designer so I can't really comment on this project, but it sounds smart and useful. The writing on the website has a lot of errors and oddities – ie. "Even typeface legends would splendid the stability of skeletons." Let me know if you want a hand with some of the phrasing. 
  • AbiRasheed
    AbiRasheed Posts: 238
    About a year or two ago I think there was a dude in here who developed a font editor for the browser. His idea is in parallel with yours by working with a skeletal system, in fact he had a working system in place and even uploaded a bunch of samples. You'll have to search the forum to find the discussion thread. 
  • AbrahamLee
    AbrahamLee Posts: 262
    AbiRasheed said:
    About a year or two ago I think there was a dude in here who developed a font editor for the browser. His idea is in parallel with yours by working with a skeletal system, in fact he had a working system in place and even uploaded a bunch of samples. You'll have to search the forum to find the discussion thread. 
    It's called FontArk. Google it.
  • Filip Paldia
    Filip Paldia Posts: 43
    Yes, his name is Ofir Shavit. He has pretty good ideas about it especially in terms of quick drawing. It is perhaps a good opportunity for the future collaboration. We know each other, and there is a mention about FontArk in the research text.
  • Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)
    Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.) Posts: 213
    Your website makes it look like it's fully-featured, commercial software, available for $99. Your post here mentions that it's the minimum viable product. That makes me want to hold off until you're really ready with this. Do you have an ETA for the completed version?
  • Filip Paldia
    Filip Paldia Posts: 43
    Dear Oliver,

    The term minimum viable product doesn't mean the product is not ready to use. We expect to always have something to improve so the product will be never finished (at least not in the near future). Is it more clear?

    Just give it a try – it's free and you have nothing to lose.

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