Condensed black display all-caps face (with unicase alternates): Radiator
Comments
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In fact, I might go so far as to suggest making all accents into simple dots or full-width horizontal lines, at least for a stylistic set... most languages don't need to disambiguate between too many accents.
FWIW, this is a boundary that David Jonathan Ross pushed against with his Fit typeface (not without consultation from plenty of native-speaking colleagues):
AÀÁÂÃÄÅĀĂĄ
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The /e with the slit is included in one of the cuts in the pdf. I'm quite against it though, maybe it does "have a slit" like /a (/a even has two, come to think of it), but it's at an entirely different height, near the x-height, and at another angle, so I find it distracting. I often felt sick looking at such /e's in Fraktur calligraphy, I totally don't like it. In Textura the /e has even two thicks one on top of another in that place, a slit is like a plastic surgery including liposuction.
This style might work if /c/s, maybe /o also got this feature. I'm not sure about legibility then, though.
I still think a continuous /e works best:
Filled-in /o? Can you expand? Do you mean hard corners? These are the only /o's I've seen:
I did consider the straight side approach but dismissed the idea early on. It's not that bad after all.
Things get interesting when cheat follows cheat.
I am tempted to put the dots in /colon closer together; how about the /semicolon then, though?
What do you mean by making the crossbar a hard corner? It already was. In your picture the crossbar is lowered, though. I think it does work better, so I adjusted it like that.
I think a wider exclamation point is needed for the all-caps cut, though for the text cut I've been meaning to narrow down the question mark instead.
I guess the cheaty rounding at the bottom of /exclam could be avoided, especially if the /period is to be square.
I find the rounded /exclam somehow more... shouting, and that's what it is supposed to be, right?
Here are the all-caps. I suspect the new question mark will cause you physical pain.
So here's the original /? along with the new /!, also known as /U-Schriek.
Same story, but I think 1:1 dots are far worse in terms of blending in. If only, they attract the eye, so that might be a good thing if that was the purpose of the typesetter.
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@Kent Lew Fit is awesome and pursuing such a similar goal as Radiator but with strikingly different results! The variation axis is impressive, and by the way I was thinking just yesterday about making Radiator Bold, with 1.5 or 2x weight. Italics have been haunting my notepad, too.
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One merit to my cheaty unruly asterisk: it is recognizable.
And the craziness (right).
Btw, there's a cheat in /G we missed, but I think it serves legibility... Or maybe not? (bottom right).
Do I spam too much? Should I come back later with a full pdf instead of posting here my every other fart?
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Fit is indeed awesome. But I totally dig what you’re coming up with here. I keep meaning to steer DJR to this thread, because I know he’d get a kick out of it.
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As for the filled-in /o, I meant this:
(Mac Preview)Slit in /e: Fair enough, it's your call.I still think cheatless punctuation should be possible (i.e., have the comma sit on top of the baseline, or make it take up the descender space and the ground-level storey). I like the two-column question mark per se, but the dot centered between two columns gives me a brain aneurism.
Maybe a 2×2 box as the point for those...?Cross-and-dots works pretty well for the asterisk. For a cheatless version, turn the dots into boxes, or even just keep the cross...As for the chin of the /G, I did point that out a few times...0 -
It's been a week — are you alright, Adam...?
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He's been busy on a 4-column version ...
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Overall hard to read, busy, difficult to sale, similar to previous free fonts. Why do you bother?
Not to mention prone to all kinds of difficult to solve problems. It's exactly this part that is the most important.0 -
High legibility isn't a requirement for typefaces. There are situations where low legibility is more effective. A busy, difficult to read typeface can attract attention, make the reader slow down and decipher the message. And almost all typefaces look like other typefaces.2
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I do not feel the need to discuss the obvious.
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Vasil Stanev said:Overall hard to read, busy, difficult to sale, similar to previous free fonts.It's not harder to read that many other display fonts, and I find it quite original and striking.Why do you bother?For art's sake?
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Hmm... Well, I can manage to read it with some work. I think you're doing a good job. Maybe you should try to make it more legible, maybe round out a few corners...
Oh, and it might be a good idea to make non-Latin characters (Greek, Cyrillic, etc.) for the font. That might be a good idea.0 -
Hello, I'm back.
See the original post (or my first comment, maybe)Corey A. Murray said:
Oh, and it might be a good idea to make non-Latin characters (Greek, Cyrillic, etc.) for the font. That might be a good idea.
Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian have been made along with the original Latin, prior to starting this discussion. It has focused on improving the Latin ever since, though, so none of the many changes have been carried over to the other scripts yet.Christian Thalmann said:It's been a week — are you alright, Adam...?I had a little break from type design to do some wedding calligraphy for my cousin. But I did spend a day or two on Radiator before that, making cheatless punctuation and... well, trying to spare you aneurysms. It turns out the height from baseline to cap line couldn't be divided into equal levels, which might have created misalignments between uppercase and lowercase. So I pulled everything up by 40 units, and then down again by a whole level to see what comes out of it. The result are 7-tier and 6-tier versions. Some things work better in one and some in the other. Almost cheatless punctuation is included along with some symbols (only quotes could be made into simple rectangles, but I decided to postpone this operation for now).What do you think?One thing I don't own in this bicameral cut is /one. Since filling all space is no longer a strict goal, I feel it should be made more like a legit /one.Somehow the bicameral setting seems suddenly dull and perhaps
But trials had to be made.Vasil Stanev said:similar to previous free fonts.0 -
Thumbs up on the ampersand!
Arrows might need a wholly different strategy though I'm not sure what it would be.
I think the 7 is better than the 6 version if only for the symmetry in letters like E and S.1 -
I also prefer 7 over 6; it allows for more natural forms in complex characters. Maybe you could use 6 as the smallcaps...?I like the non-cheat (honest?) period, comma, etc. Maybe quotes could be made non-cheaty in two columns, or in one column if you allow opening and closing quotes to look identical (why not, at least for a cut?). The more exotic punctuation is a bit freaky, to be honest. Perhaps guillemets could work in two columns, i.e., just a hovering /c with a detached core? Hyphen could be a lot taller, I think.The super-large and text-embracing parentheses etc. are cool and original, but perhaps a bit too large to work in the otherwise well-behaved text. I'd definitely make the default version cap-high and two-column.Your /eight is still cheaty! As for the /one, I still think this one works best, since the counter is also /one-shaped:
Yeah, arrows and symbols look like they're from another font. The ampersand isn't bad, but a bit black; I'd add a cut or two.0 -
I took some time off, and with refreshed sight, I decided for now to abandon the all-caps cuts and focus on:* the text cut, which will now become just 'Radiator',* and the corresponding Radiator Fraktur.I adapted the Fraktur to match the 7 row layout. For now it also shares the more exotic nonalphabetic characters with the regular cut (if anything stands out, please let me know, thank you).Changes:* open one,* new eight,* 3-row hyphen,* 2-col guillemets,* simplified accents (not sure about dieresis and cedilla).I am acknowledging that parentheses are quirky... The current form accommodates accented characters, but sure is too high for English text. How about a contextual approach? (Dicey, I suppose, but for a display font like that, and one that will not sell either way and is done only for art's sake?
) I will keep thinking about the quotes, but I'm postponing the decision for now.The smallcaps idea is badass! I will look into it.The ampersand is tricky. Adding a cut might help, but where? With a cut in the nether region it ceases to be decipherable.The symbols, arrows... Can you show me a font where symbols and arrows are indistinguishable from regular letters? I know my ideas here don't conform to da system, but do they really work so badly in the contexts I showcase in the pdf? Are they useless? I just thought it would be nice to have arrows that agree in weight with the font, and the moment I usually design arrows is when I need to use them in a specimen.About the symbols, they are slightly tweaked leftovers of a past era, if they are ugly, which they probably are, please let me know and I will get rid of them, or try to tweak them more. But again, I don't think conforming to the grid system is of utmost importance in this case.
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I have to retract my previous statement because now I see it has potential. And I thought of an interesting implementation: if reversed vertically, it can serve as an excellent script for an ancient civilization in a Hollywood movie. I can absolutely see it in an Indiana Jones-like scenario. 1
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I took some time off, and with refreshed sight, I decided for now to abandon the all-caps cuts and focus on:I hope by «abandon» you mean «save for later»...?Looking good! The basic alphabet of Radiator looks almost entirely cheat-free, only /a retains one. Maybe let go of it as well?My suggestion to make diaereses indistinguishable from macrons was probably a bad idea. Might be better to use the two-squares approach from the lowercase for the uppercase as well (might even work if you align them with the grid and accept a non-centered placement).The /dcroat and /hbar don't parse for me; their stem needs to continue above the bar.I agree that the arrows could be allowed to break the «rules». Right now, though, they don't even agree with each other, stylistically.As an avid fan of guillemets, I'd like to advocate for a better solution. Maybe you could even use a vertical mid-bar with quarter-circle terminals for each individual chevron. It's a cheat, but I suppose I'd rather have an unobtrusive guillemet that works rather than something semi-legal that draws undue attention to itself.Nice going!
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The off-center solution kind of works, but the dots seem to be falling off the rounded base letters, don't they?The middle solution would fit right in into the Pixel cut
How about a full crown of teeth? (Observe how it could be interpreted to represent the threee bars of capital /E, just like the original umlaut is a simplified lc /e).
Does eating into the base seem appropriate? By the way, cheatless /a.
The new guillemet is definitely more well behaved and looks less like a logotype. The cheats of this kind also appear in the accents, so I deem them acceptable.I see designing things like arrows is an entirely different skillset to acquire. Are these any better?
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Love the new guillemets!Interesting takes on diaereses. I can certainly see the triple squares as a possibility, at least for some cuts. What would two adjacent squares breaking the grid look like here?Arrows: Much better, but I'd center the horizontal and diagonal arrows vertically.BTW, it's «la» mort.0
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Maybe try doubling up the line that makes each arrow (so it's like a think outline around a thin white arrow shape)? Or maybe that'll make them too big and clunky.0
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Eating into the base on đ and ħ seems entirely appropriate to me, btw.
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