Opinions on reverse contrast French Clarendon

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  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    Thanks @Craig Eliason, I'm going to experiment some more with this.
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    Craig Eliason said:
    I'd expect tau's top to be like pi's.
    Maybe worth trying removing the serifs at the top of the center stroke of Psi.
    Baseline serif of eta feels strange.
    I've had some time to work on this and I completely agree about the /tau.  I also tried removing the serifs from the /Psi, but it looked too out of place in context.  That said, the letterform did need some attention.  Do you think the new one works better?

    As for the /eta, I've been wrangling with serif placement for a while.  You might notice my initial Greek version (Sept 28th) had serifs on all baselines, ascenders and descenders, but I think this was a  somewhat heavy-handed attempt to harmonise the three scripts.  I have experimented with, effectively, a sans /eta, as suggested, but I didn't think it worked, so I'm going to keep it as it was.

    Thanks again for your feedback.
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,440
    Yes, that Psi is better.
    Capital Pi looks wide to me. 
    The serifs on capital Xi could be shortened--since the letter is more crowded, they needn't be as long as those on T/Tau.
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    I thought I'd go ahead and add Bulgarian local forms.  I've shown them, together with the default Cyrillic characters in the attached PDF.

    If anyone has any suggestions for improvement, I'd be grateful.
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    Given this is a reverse contrast font, it seemed logical to try to add Hebrew.  I'd never tried to design a Hebrew script before and, foolishly underestimated the challenge.  It took a long time for me to find a form of letters that seemed to honour both the characteristics of the script and the existing font structure.  That said, I've very aware that what seems to me to be a good start might, to a native speaker, be well wide of the mark, so I'd welcome any feedback at all, especially if you think I'm going in entirely the wrong direction.  At this stage, I'm less worried about spacing and more concerned with letterform.  Some I'm aware, are atypical.

    I've shown all four scripts in the PDF for comparison.

    Thanks in advance.

  • Jasper de Waard
    Jasper de Waard Posts: 641
    I know nothing about Hebrew, so no help there. But just out of curiosity, are there any reverse contrast Hebrew typefaces where the emphasis is on vertical strokes? Would this not make more sense to achieve the same quirkiness as the Latin?
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    I did think about trying that approach, but decided against it because I know little enough about conventional Hebrew forms to start reversing the contrast.

    Maybe, something to come back to if and when I get a bit more familiar with the script. 
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    A few minor tweaks together with more significant changes to the /alef and /tav.
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    In exporting a sample PDF from Glyphs, I hadn't taken into consideration the fact the text ran left-right instead of right-left, making it challenging at best to read the Hebrew.

    Here's an update from Pages with Greek shown for comparison.
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    An update on the Hebrew.  I still have some work to do on spacing, kerning and positioning of the Nikkud, but would welcome any feedback on letterforms.

    Also, I assume it's not a major oversight in a font such as this to omit cantillation marks?  
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    edited November 2018
    I'm nearing the point where I have to make a decision about whether or not to include the Hebrew script in the release.  I've made a number of changes since the last sample, but my lack of familiarity with the script leaves me feeling unsure.

    If anyone has any thoughts, I'd very much welcome them.
  • Ori Ben-Dor
    Ori Ben-Dor Posts: 386
    I'm afraid your lack of familiarity with the Hebrew script shows. I'll be glad to help you with that, but I'm a bit short of time at the moment. Are you planning to release it soon?
  • Steve Gardner
    Steve Gardner Posts: 138
    I expect it'll be released within the next couple of weeks.

    Though I'd had some encouraging feedback from a couple of graphic designer friends, I felt it was probably quite weak.

    I'll probably go ahead and release the three scripts (Latin, Cyrillic & Greek) and release an update at a later date to include the Hebrew if I'm able to improve it sufficiently.  

    Any advice you can offer would be very much appreciated.

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