Practice-Sans first typeface

Alexandru Năstase

Hi everyone,

I recently took a Type Design class and this was made during that. I'm originally a Visual Designer, always loved picking fonts and searching for those with personality so I took a class.

BRIEF:
1. A text typeface with a high x-height.
2. Aimed somewhere between UI and Print(did some print proofs and kinda looks ok even under 10pt).
3. A bit of personality but not too in the readers face.
4. Elegant but not serif.
5. Full formed numbers.
*also dropped in some alternatives.

So this were my criteria when I started, I don't have any historical reference what so ever.
Kerning is still in progress.

Thanks in advance for taking the time.

Thomas Phinney

Don’t do any kerning yet! You need to do spacing first, and redo and refine it, at length. Kerning is something one does very late in the type design process.

Vasil Stanev

Hi very nice and clean for a first try! First, it would perhaps be better if You adjusted the width and color of some glyphs. B, F, K, W look too wide. Also, the S kind of breaks character compared to the C and G, same goes for the 2 (look at the way the stroke ends at he top) . Z looks slightly too bold overall. Same goes for 4, 5, 6, 8, 9. The numbers are usually harder to get right.
In the lowercase, the two-story g needs some work on the tail, and the second y looks out of character to me.
Always be sure to flip your design vertically to catch problems of balance.

Alexandru Năstase

Thanks guys!

Roger that @Thomas Phinney still tweaking the spacing I just wanted to mention I did not do any kerning on it.

Thanks a lot @Vasil Stanev for the details! You underlined some of my suspicions! and yeah numbers are hard to shape.

Ori Ben-Dor

I'd add that h,m,n,u also look too wide. o maybe too narrow. non-descending J too wide.

Adam Jagosz

The top terminal of /J seems inadequate. /X /Y are too light.

Samuil Simonov

I can't understand the logic behind the width of your strokes. Look at your b-c-d, that c has a completely different construction, it's thick along its whole length.

Thomas Phinney

The rounds seem lighter than the vertical straights in both cap and lowercase. Normally they have to be a couple units heavier to look right.

C is leaning forward but c is okay. Both S and s are leaning backwards (it is OK for reasons of tradition for S/s to lean slightly forwards, but backwards it not normal).

Thomas Phinney

Seems like spacing is being based exclusively on sidebearings and not on actual stem and glyph positions. Looking at the g-h-i-j-k spacing it is very inconsistent. 

I can’t comment on which spacing is better without knowing what the intended “design size” is for this typeface. That is, at what size should the spacing be ideal? And for screen or print? Yes, you can intend it to be versatile, but for any given usage, the spacing will be optimal at just one size (or size range). You need to know what that is and aim for that. The g-h spacing would be fine for quite large “display settings” while the i-j spacing might work for body text sizes on screen. So neither one is necessarily wrong—they just don’t go together.

Alex Visi

A few more non-professional notes:

Why is the top cut of t is reversed?
The tail of single-story g feels to narrow and shy, could be wider to the left.
These soft Kk are kind of weak (imho). Perhaps, this strong alt.y-ish corner could work better? Same for R.
Serif in A is too small, won’t work in text sizes.
S is unbalanced, s is better.

Q and r are awesome!