Please list your favorite foreign looking Latin fonts

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  • Vasil Stanev
    Vasil Stanev Posts: 775
    edited September 2022
    Ray Larabie said:

    quote

     When I made my elven font ( https://www.behance.net/gallery/56880001/Tengwar-Sindarin-Latin-and-Cyrillic ) I didn't do a detailed research into Tolkien fandom, just did the font. Then some of them pointed out to me that the alphabet messes the original idea, because Tengwar is in tabular form, as indeed the Japanese kanas are.
    I thought about it and decided that the output system should override the the input one, in this particular case - so no tables. If someone has a better idea of doing things, let them do it thems-elves.  :D

    Also, quite unlike the source script, these type of fonts have very, very limited use.


  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 1,988
    Fascinating story, Ray!
    But: Pics or it didn't happen. :grimace:
  • Michael Vokits
    Michael Vokits Posts: 214
    Tengwar and Cirth need tabular presentation; featural scripts are funny like that. The tables make the systematic changes clear (which is the entire point of a featural system). An alphabet, in contrast, is a basically haphazard assemblage of unrelated glyphs, with little if any system. Very different requirements.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,432
    @Christian Thalmann

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfldB4g-oYs
  • Miles Newlyn
    Miles Newlyn Posts: 252
    Jensen Arabique by John Castle based on lettering by Gustav Jensen.


  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 1,988
    @Ray Larabie: Wow, that's super obvious! :open_mouth:
    Miles: That doesn't look the least bit Arabic to me...
  • Simon Cozens
    Simon Cozens Posts: 747
    Ray Larabie said:

    These shows conducted on-the-street interviews with foreigners who had no trouble reading words written in this font, but most Japanese people couldn’t read it. I don’t mean they had trouble reading it—I mean they couldn’t read it at all. Their knowledge of the characters which the letters were based on completely overrode their ability to make out the Latin (romaji) forms.

    This is brilliant. I had a look at the web site and even as a native Latin reader I really struggled not to read it as kana. I think you could probably push it further in the kana direction if you wanted to - the C could be squarer on the left and the downstroke of the T positioned more to the right. Then I'd be completely lost...

    But speaking of the web site, I really appreciated this:

    In a certain context, Electroharmonix['s] can be construed as culturally insensitive and can contribute to casual racism. Research before using this font to ensure you’re not using it to perpetuate cultural stereotypes.
    If only *@%!$* Samarkan came with a similar warning...
  • Russell McGorman
    Russell McGorman Posts: 262
    I just read about square word calligraphy on Twitter...  Pretty interesting. 

    Florian Pircher said:
    This reminds me of Square Word Calligraphy by Xu Bing.

    More illustrations can be found at http://www.xubing.com/en/work/details/197?classID=10&type=class


  • Vasil Stanev
    Vasil Stanev Posts: 775
    edited July 13
    I am endlessly fascinated by the various scripts one can find all over the world. In Asia alone, tens of reputable systems with a long and rich history are presenting each one a treasure trove of a myriad smaller and bigger gems. You could get lost in the literary tradition of a even a single Indian state, much less the whole of the subcontinent or Asia! Here is my meager attempt of Cyrillizing a part of the Tibetan font Jomolhari. I did it for a translation I did of a book about The Beacon of Certainty by Mipham Rinpoche:


    Since Cyrillic has two cases and Tibetan only one, I might add an uppercase.

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