It is with some trepidation that I submit my design for critique, since several of this forum's esteemed contributors expressed some strong opinions about essentially derivative typefaces, superfluous rehashes of the old-style model, as well as beginners punching above their weight. I therefore feel obliged to preface this by saying that I am not a type designer and that I don't have type designer's education, perspective or ambitions. While working on my design I wasn't thinking in terms of innovation, self-expression or "cultural contribution". What I am is a moderately competent type user and all I wanted to achieve was a modest text typeface for my personal use which would have all the features I like and none of the features I don't. Even though I realize such aim might not be particularly laudable, I do hope it can be accepted as legitimate.
Scarbo (provisionally named after the sadistic dwarf from Bertrand's
Gaspard de la Nuit) was conceived as a book typeface suitable for body text set at about 9 to 11 pt. Since the books I specifically designed it for may very well never be published, I can also imagine using it for correspondence, business cards and the like. At the present stage I was concerned only with the support for the Polish language.
I believe the design bears its influences on its sleeve, but I will enumerate them briefly. The roundness and generous width of the characters, together with the elongated, flat-ended ascenders and descenders were derived from the family of faces inspired by Griffo's type (Bembo, Dante, Iowan Old Style etc.). Since literal Renaissance revival was not my goal, I turned to Plantin and Times for several more "contemporary" (by the way of the early 20th century) letterforms, including the large-bowled /a and large-eyed /e, as well as several other glyphs (e.g. the /?). While the use of slab serifs places my typeface in the tradition of Joanna, Whitman and Scala, I wanted the effect to remain subtle, coming off almost as an afterthought; Štorm's Jannon 10 provided the initial impulse.
One of my main goals was to arrive at a streamlined, smoothed out and slightly generic look. I wanted to avoid any too-obvious vestiges of handwriting (beyond the broad-nibbed terminals). Whenever possible, I went for the simplest or even "naïve" letterforms: /k's and /K's arms and legs meet at the stem, /M has parallel stems, /R – a straight leg, and both /w and /W – only two serifs.
The only eccentricity of Scarbo that isn't a result of my lack of skill but rather of a conscious decision is the use of angled serifs at places where most humanist slab serif designs would have straight vertical ones, namely /C, /E, /G, /L, /s, /S, /z and /Z. This decision was partly dictated by the fact that angled serifs in /s and /z play together much more nicely in Polish digraphs c_z, r_z and s_z:

At the current stage the font is spaced (using Frank Blokland's cadence method with some ad-hoc modifications) but unkerned. I plan to add small caps at some point, but first I'd like to make sure whether the uppercase is at all acceptable. I also have a vague vision for the italics, but I'm afraid it will be quite some time before I arrive at anything substantial.
Since I lack the benefit of formal type design education, mentors or even type-savvy acquaintances, I would be eternally grateful for any comment or advice on my design. As this is my first project of this sort, I feel rather uncertain about virtually all aspects of it, from the proportions and contrast down to the shapes of individual letters. The glyphs that are a particular source of concern for me at the moment are the /s, /S, /T, /Z, /z, /3 and /5.
Thank you in advance for any help or opinion!
Lastly, because I believe it is incumbent on a dwarf clumsily trying to climb onto the shoulders of giants to at least acknowledge the names of said giants, I would like to list the typefaces that to the greatest extent have influenced my decisions when working on Scarbo. Even if it wasn't my intention to replicate any of them in particular, their aspects inform my idea of what constitutes a good text font and it would be remiss of me not to mention them here:
Adobe Text, Alia JY, Aragon, Bembo, Concorde, Dante, Erato, Fournier, Berthold Garamond, Iowan Old Style, Jannon 10, Joanna, Kings Caslon, Logica, Lyon, Minion, Plantin, Poynter, Rawlinson, Rotation, Sabon, Sabon Next, Scala, Times Ten, MVB Verdigris, Whitman, Yale
Comments
When you use other people's designs, you got to make the result not only effective, but more pronounced. Always look for size, proportion and contrast. The upper serifs of C, S etc. for example are too small and will get lost at smaller sizes. b, 6 and 9 look out of place, 3 is slightly leaning to the left. Always keep in mind that width should be consistent: you have a smallish a right before a very big b, a tight s and a wide, generous u. The tail of Q could go as low as the one of q. f looks like too much of a solo player with that hat. k should be redone. ew should have the stroke more pronounced, it should go out more boldly. Work on the ą where the ogonek meets the stem. g is strange, looks too much like a san-serif Times. Try some variants, especially on the spur. Ł -make the stroke bolder.
All in all, a nice font, nothing special, but it does not have to be. Body serifs keep a low profile, so I consider the job done.
One more thing. Text fonts always go in quartets: a book, a bold, an italic, a bold italic. Create the other three players and you will see the inconsistencies yourself. What might have worked for the book weight might not work for the bold or for their interpolation, so there is such a thing as retrofitting the older design to the newer. Only when you have done this further exercise can the job be judged in full, IMO.
To sum up: good way to teach yourself some principles, a bad way if you want to be original.
Your curves overshoot too much I think—look at the letter height of the first 5 letters of the big Polish word you posted.
The tightness of the curl in /a/‘s upper terminal doesnt fit with the rest.
/f/ ascender looks a bit flaccid.
I like you already.
As various type designers have confirmed to me in person, here is a commonplace scenario. You open a thick envelope one day and find inside a well-typeset letter that describes the writer as a high-school senior who has followed your work for many years, but, while maintaining full respect for same, the writer feels you missed an important precedent from the early 18th century that would have informed the design of [typeface that sold millions of dollars’ worth of licences].
I hope you don’t mind, this letter continues, but I did a quick mockup – this means six months’ after-school beavering – of what at the very least the roman and italic would have looked like if this important tranche of typographic history had not been forgotten.
I really don’t mean any offence, the letter continues, but if I’m reading [scion of typography]’s original notes in Latin correctly, my improved design here is historically justifiable.
Yours faithfully, the letter, which contained no neutral quotation marks, let alone emoji, concludes.
So you’re really on the right track here, Jan. Plus I like your shit.
I’m a fan of generous flags on /f, so I’m glad you’re not backing down there. I recommend drawing a «retracted» version of it for use before closing quotes, brackets, capitals etc., and even as a fallback solution to the ligatures.
Btw, the /f_h-style ligatures strike me as a bit compressed. They don’t appear in your Polish text; I’d test them out in Latin.
Have you considered making the typeface available open-source?
On the /f/ I’m not opposed to a larger ascender tout court (so long as you’re prepared to handle the fitting issues it introduces). I just think yours leans too soon. Compare Bembo’s which stays rigid and vertical (especially on the right side) a bit above the crossbar before thinning and turning.
I don’t see the /a/ as too narrow.
Sounds like you see overshoot adjustment as a compromise between accounting for optical illusions with regard to alignment, and something to do with the balance of interior counters. Can you say more about what that second factor is? Would you want an /o/ to look slightly but noticeably taller than a /z/ at target size to achieve something else?
But perhaps I am overly influenced by Ravel’s take on the subject, I haven’t read the original work.
I honour your humble attitude as a ‘beginner’. You’re on your way to leave this stage behind you, maybe more quickly than you assume. Your reflections about your design approach and reference designs you define as (sort of) models – are totally credible to me. With execution/glyph drawing you have done really well already. As common as it may seem at first glance, I find your project the more noteworthy the more I think about it.
1st, the idea of blending features of the Bembonian and Caslonian traditions is interesting in itself and, as far as I know, this concept is everything but over-explorated. 2nd, your key motivation for doing this as “a typeface just for my own use” interests me, because I have experienced myself that this can be a very strong motivation and it causes some sort of subconcious guidance for detail decisions induced rather by one’s heart and womb rather than from the brain.
I would like to sincerely thank you for your comments, which double as a very warm welcome to the forums. Even though I knew I could count on this community for sage technical advice, I was half-prepared to be thoroughly castigated for some rookie mistakes or my generally misguided approach. I certainly wasn't expecting this level of encouragement, for which I remain most grateful. I'm very glad, if surprised, to hear that my design is already looking half-decent (although let us be clear that I didn't raise the bar for myself particularly high).
@joeclark – As an occasional reader of your writings since the mid-noughties, I can only feel honored that my very own thread inspired this tidbit of your unique brand of snark. It is nice for a change to be appreciated for my lack of qualifications, a virtue I managed to achieve without much of a struggle.
A retracted alternative /f would undeniably help to prevent any bruising that this glyph is cruising for with its garish and provocative flag. Thanks for this suggestion! The ligatures are without doubt the most half-hearted component of this whole enterprise and I will need to reapproach them with more care.
Without this correction, I could well imagine that the prominence of /z in Polish would raise the overall perceived location of the x-height.
I don't think you're alone in seeing this--your analysis reminds me of wrestling with how to adjust the x-height on a bolder weight of a type design, especially a low-modulation design. In that example it's easy for me to see how heartlines and counterspaces make your two questions have different answers. It makes sense to me that there would be a similar though more subtle effect glyph-to-glyph.
Along those lines, standard practice for handling too-small bolds seems to be raising the midline (not also lowering the baseline), so the asymmetrical solution you're talking about has precedence there too.
(Still think Jan's flat letters look too small though!
I remember reading somewhere that Adrian Frutiger once noted that, practical concerns aside, vertical and diagonal stems also need a little overshooting.
Maybe that's what's really happening here.
http://typedrawers.com/discussion/2111/too-much-overshoot