An Italic for Uccello

Christian Thalmann

Very nice detail!

Do you insist on those tiny offset stratopheric dots on Roman /i/? I know they're historical, but personally I find them quite absurd...

ivan louette

Thanks a lot !

I think I will probably slightly change the italic /i dot size togheter with changes in the italic punctuation marks. It would be a little bit bigger than now but not bigger than the roman one which I fixed after a lot of trials.

I had similar problems with the accents (and also their positioning). And the italic /è accent still remains too slender to my taste.

However I can never say never, and if I find a better (and why not bigger) solution I will adopt it ;-)

Christian Thalmann

So the Roman is final? I would much prefer something like this:

I consider the font unusable with the current /i/.

ivan louette

Thanks for your point of view. No roman is not final And perhaps it will be intermediate between mine and yours. But I will certainly keep todays form sa an alternate like I have done for punctuation here :

ivan louette

@Christian Thalmann I tried a new solution for the roman /i dot. Bigger to this latter, or closer to the glyph has a bad impact on the texture and the readability.

I compared also to some other fonts below.

Christian Thalmann

Note that all typefaces except for Jenson have a less eccentric dot than yours, with at least half of the dot supported by the stem. The newer faces all have centered dots, which reflects present-day sensibilities. The eccentric dot was a bad strategy to avoid collision with /f/ — now that we have stylistic alternates and ligatures at our disposal, there's really no reason to keep perpetuating this malpractice.

Have you tried a centered dot for Uccello?

Craig Eliason

Look not only at vertical alignment (i.e. Christian’s “half the dot supported by the stem”) but also at the trajectory of the right side of the stem establishing a limit for the tittle’s drift. 

Christian Thalmann

BTW, the text sample you posted is still from the old version, right?

ivan louette

Despite Griffo isn't my preferred designer between him and Jenson it seems its practice is "half the dot supported by the stem" (see below). And I will try that. However he already uses ligatures for /fi and /longs i. Thus I am not sure the eccentric dot is a strategy to avoid collision. I think it could be one of the tricks to break the monotony of the font verticality and to introduce some dynamics. That's what I like personnally in this dots positioning.

ivan louette

@Christian Thalmann Ooops ! You are right, that was the old one I changed it.