How do I start working on italics?

Ori Ben-Dor

I'd like to start working on italics for my font (Portfolio Mono, see a separate thread).
The problem is I've never done italics before, so I'm not sure how to approach this task.

It's going to be true italics, but related to the roman enough to consider the roman as a starting point.

I'm considering starting from:
1. scratch.
2. the roman slanted.
3. the roman manipulated by some fancy tool that is supposed to give better results than simple slanting.
(Am I missing any option?)

How would you approach this?
Any tips?
What tools do you use for better slanting?

Jasper de Waard

I would go for 2. Yes, there are tools, but since this is your first italic I think editing the slanted glyphs would be a useful lesson, and allow you to judge the quality of existing tools for yourself.

Tools I know of: RMX slanter, and Glyphs' slant function.

John Hudson

Start with slanted roman for the uppercase, and spend a lot of time figuring out what you need to do to the round letters and bowls to make them work. That's the best way to understand the difference between slanted forms and forms written on a slant.

A 'true italic' lowercase, i.e. one with a cursive ductus construction, is a completely different beast from a roman, so there's no point in starting with a slanted roman. Better to start from scratch.

Tip: because a diagonal line between two heights is longer than a vertical line between the same heights, the x-height of an italic tends to appear optically larger than that of a corresponding roman, so you should compensate for this by making the italic x-height slightly shorter. You don't need to do the same compensation for cap height or extenders, because these don't have the same impact on perceived text size.

Johannes Neumeier

One thing to keep in mind when using a slanted roman (and generally when having a first go at italics) is to compare darkness between roman and the italic you are developing. Simply slanting them will likely not result in an even grey value between the two.

Hrant H. Papazian

Ori Ben-Dor said:

It's going to be true italics

There's nothing "true" about a subordinate style distracting from the tone of the Roman.

John Hudson

I avoid the term 'true italic', except when quoting someone else's use of it, even though I know what it conventionally means in these discussions, and it does make sense in terms of the original model of italic derived from Italian renaissance cursive. There are so many ways to design an italic, and so many ways to balance or subordinate, harmonise or distinguish in combination with a roman.

Hrant H. Papazian

John Hudson said:

There are so many ways to design an italic, and so many ways to balance or subordinate, harmonise or distinguish in combination with a roman.

True. It remains that the formulaïc approach we usually see yields an Italic that might be great on its own, but is too informal to properly fulfill its typical role. I call it the Aldine shotgun wedding.

Slant being the cornerstone of what readers expect out of an emphasis style, without any further context a (non-mechanical) slanted-Roman is a much more sober starting point than what we type designers are conditioned to value.

James Montalbano

Ed Benguiat's advice on making Italics from uprights was to slant the round forms half the amount of the desired angle and then rotate them again by half. So a 12 degree italic angle would be slanted 6 degrees and rotated 6 degrees. I have mixed results using this technique. I think it probably worked better in film.

Hrant H. Papazian

James Montalbano said:

Ed Benguiat's advice on making Italics from uprights was to slant the round forms half the amount of the desired angle and then rotate them again by half.

I think I'd heard that from Briem too. Maybe he got it from Benguiat...

Thomas Phinney

It is also Briem’s advice, yes.

I came out to the same place, after getting less-satisfactory results from both slanting and rotation on their own. Just as a starting point, for round-ish shapes.

Chris Lozos

I have spent quite some time attempting to marry the partial rotation partial slant technique.  I get what it is going after but feel it is more time consuming than just redrawing the curves as I see them.  This goes back to the very long process of learning to see and evaluate what you see.  Whatever methods or experiments I have tried, including mathematical variances, have helped me learn to see but you still have to do the work.  First you have to face the facts that having done the upright does not mean you are even half way to the italic.  Hopefully, you have come to enjoy drawing letters by know since that is the most rewarding part of the process. I can state emphatically that the italic is much more work than the roman to me.

Ori Ben-Dor

Thank you all for the valuable input, I really appreciate this!
I leaned toward starting from scratch before and I think I'm ready to take this approach now.