Farro—a joyful, whimsical display typeface

Aceler Chua

Hi all! I’ve designed Farro for Grayscale—the company I’m currently working for—as an attempt to replace the current display typeface we’re using, and potentially we want to use Farro for clients’ projects as well.

Farro is a display typeface which has a joyful, whimsical personality in its shape. It currently has the 215 glyphs required by Google fonts submission along with a few more glyphs, and we will most probably add more glyphs in the future.

Whilst we haven’t started with kerning yet, we’d already love to hear all critiques and comments from you guys in order to improve the font to a level where it’s ready for a professional release (We want to make the font open source and would love to release it through Google Fonts). Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot!

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Aceler Chua said:
It currently has the 215 glyphs required by Google fonts submission

Just one thing: giving away (and even selling) a typeface intended for branding is a very bad idea (even though it's sadly trending).

Marc Oxborrow

General impressions.

1) I like it!
2) I would characterize it as sturdy and idiosyncratic. "Joyful and whimsical" seems a stretch.

AbrahamLee

You'll probably want to change the WinAscent/WinDescent metrics since anything below the baseline is currently getting clipped on Windows.

Chris Lozos

"Joyful and whimsical" seems a stretch.

Agree

Aceler Chua

@Hrant H. Papazian
The truth is that we’ve tried to use the Farro with the current branding we have; it doesn’t work as good as we’ve expected. And since we don’t plan on doing a brand overhaul again soon, the chance of us actually using Farro as our brand typeface is quite low.

@Marc Oxborrow
I’m glad you like it.

@Marc Oxborrow @Chris Lozos
Just had a conversation here at the office and we do agree that “Joyful and whimsical” might not be the most accurate description of the typeface, we are now leaning towards something like “peculiar.” Thanks for the suggestion!

@AbrahamLee
Thanks for noticing this! Updated the metrics and should be working alright now. I’ve attached the new kit here.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

@Aceler Chua I get it, cool.

Concerning adjectives, what about spunky and muscular?  :-)

Samuil Simonov

@Hrant H. Papazian I wouldn't call a font spunky if I planned to sell it in the UK or other places speaking British English.

Jasper de Waard

Overall I like it!

I would slant the top-left of T and Z the other way. In the V the rigt diagonal could be a little thicker. In the K the top diagonal could be thinner.

I like the flaring of the j, maybe other letters could use some more flaring as well.

the Q doesn't really fit. 

Have you tried adding that little fling from the 2 to the 5 and 7?

I think the period and comma need to be much bigger, but it would be easier to judge with a more texty sample.

Aceler Chua

@Hrant H. Papazian
Muscular might be a bit too strong for the typeface; we want it to be friendlier

@Jasper de Waard
I agree the /Q does need some more “taste” to it, might need to rethink the shape of it.

I made a textier sample and it does look like the comma and period should be bigger, Do they have a correlation to the tittles on /i and /j?



Thanks for the suggestions! Will work on the soon and post an update here.

Wolf Böse

looks like something you can cut yourself with.
i would say maybe a martial artsy vibe

text example maybe not in blockstyle to determin word space.
seems like it could be a tad larger.
also sidebearings in generall in the paragraphs seems tight to me

r seems awefully whide compared to the t
the descender of the g could use some more space from the upper part

Christian Thalmann

Muscular + friendly = heroic?

I rather like it. Strong olive flavor, but not rancid at all.

Your ð doesn't work, though. Bowl too small, top unbalanced.

Jasper de Waard

One thing that becomes apparant in the text setting is that it's spaced too tight.

And don't bother about the tittles when designing punctuation. They will usually have similar shapes, but can have very different sizes.

Aceler Chua

Thanks for all the comments and here’s an update to the design—

1. /Q, /T, and /Z has been redesigned as suggested by @Jasper de Waard
2. Size of comma and period has been increased
3. Sidebearings of all glyphs in the light master have been widened manually as suggested by @Thomas Helbig
4. /ð has been adjusted as suggested by @Christian Thalmann

The new kit has been attached below, feel free to give it a test and give us more critiques  

Christian Thalmann

I'm afraid the ð is still unbalanced. Check out this recommendation.

Aceler Chua

@Christian Thalmann
Thanks for the link, that’s very useful! I hope I got it right this time

I’ve also edited the width of /space in the light master as I found it too wide.

New kit with updates attached.

Aceler Chua

Hi all,

After more than half a year, there’s finally some updates with the project.

Although by no means Farro is perfect (especially with the spacing,) we are happy enough with the result, and we think it’s ready to see the world.

We’ve created a mini site for Farro so everyone can play with it a bit: https://playground.grayscale.design/farro/

Any comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Hope you guys have fun!

Christian Thalmann

The tail of /g is hard to separate visually from the body at smaller sizes. I would suggest raising the bowl a bit to bring more air between it and the tail.

Craig Eliason

I think the caps could be heavier. 

Jasper de Waard

Looking good

I think m, n, h, u are a bit narrow.