Or shorten the /j/ too. Shallow descenders are a sign of good taste, just ask Hrant.Theunis de Jong said:Admittedly, it would make them go less deep than the /j, but the /p and /q are a bit too deep for my taste anyway.
What would be that category, the overall look? Is there any name/tags for it? Asking so I can find examples and learn more about it.
Thanks for trying it out. Absolutely! It bugged me a little, but after @Paul Miller pointed it out, I noticed how strong the impression is. Working on it right now. I think a big clue to solving /X/ of this font is what the natural way of writing it is; two separate diagonal strokes, instead of two curves. So the letter should be more in tune with the Z than the U. Tuning and trying out! Thank you both!
Thanks @Adam Ladd. Absolutely, among the numerals, /4/ sticks out from the set.Adam Ladd said:I like the attempt for a unique take on the /4 but to me it feels uncomfortable to view/read... perhaps making it a little more conventional? And I wonder if the tail on the lowercase /l is a little long? When read in the word "failing" in your above chunk of text, it creates a pretty large gap between the /l and /i.
John Savard said:I attempted to illustrate what I was thinking of, however, and showing your original X on the left, followed by my attempts, it is clear they are all dismal failures.
Thank you both very much @Paul Miller and @John SavardPaul Miller said:John Savard said:I attempted to illustrate what I was thinking of, however, and showing your original X on the left, followed by my attempts, it is clear they are all dismal failures.I had a little think about what I would have done given this problem and came up with this.
@Paul Miller thank you for your help!Paul Miller said:A big improvement.
Thank you for the advice.Thomas Phinney said:The top right bar of the “t” should stick out as much as its bottom foot.
The new K and R are not really working as yet.
@Ray Larabie thank you for taking the time to explain that view, very insightful. I will thoroughly evaluate all the glyphs again with such an approach in mind.Ray Larabie said:When you're going with a technical style you're showcasing a rule. The reader looks at the words and perceives the rule. In this case "a strict grid with rules for radia". When you need to break those rules, I recommend thinking about bending those rules within a consistent threshold of imperceptibility. How much are you willing to go off grid and to change the radius or a corner? Figure out how far you're going to bend the rules and then do that consistently across everything. If the rules are being consistently bent to a certain threshold and you need to go beyond that, it's more likely to go unnoticed. If you stay rigid to the rules and bend them too far, it jumps out at the reader.
For example; if you have a low resolution pixel font and one of the letters goes "off-grid" like an M or a W, that rule break could be easily noticed. If the rest of the font is barely perceptibly already off-grid, the M or W is more likely to harmonize.
Another example: picture a classic monospaced typewriter font. Except one letter isn't monospaced. There's a wide m. The gaps in the m are identical to those in the n. That's going look odd and stand out to the reader. Now look at ITC American Typewriter. The monospace rule is broken all over the place so we don't even notice that the m is wide. The rules are bent just enough that the reader still perceives it as a typewriter font.
When I look at this, the and H and U look wider than the O. The top of the B looks larger than the bottom. and the "crossbar" looks thick. If you optically adjust the crossbar like Helvetica, that's probably bending the rule too far. But you can give it a subtle nudge higher and thinner to a degree that it doesn't spoil the effect of the rule. If you keep making those adjustments all across the typeface within a consistent perception threshold, you'll have more flexibility in dealing with troublesome characters like K, R, V and X.
@John Savard thanks a lot for your insight, it helped me sort some things out. Still working on the font and improving things, will make an update when it gets to a certain point.John Savard said:Personally, in line with Ray Larabie's comment, I thought that unlike the X, the original K and the R weren't broken, and so "fixing" them led to the typeface no longer embodying its rationale of being designed according to constant rules as much.Thus, he has a valid point, but to apply it will require thought, the right way not always being obvious, as the question is, where to strike the balance between keeping what makes the design unique, and ensuring people can easily read text in the face.But he also makes a different point: that if the typeface makes only one exception to a rigid rule, instead of relaxing it everywhere a bit, that will be glaring. Looking at your typeface from that point of view, but only briefly, I saw only one thing that appeared to clash seriously with that rule: capital M and N as against lower-case m and n. And of course, it really didn't, since the forms of the capital and lower-case are genuinely differnt, and the rules were applied correctly to each - perhaps there is something this hints at that could be adjusted, whether in those or other letters, but as likely not.My view is that instead of changing the K and the R to attempt to embody this principle after having changed the X... the thing to do is to stick with the original K and R, keep the changed lower-case X as is, and change the upper-case X so that the crossbars are angled like those in the lower-case X, thus keeping a bit more to the original "grid" aspect, while also not having the legibility issue of the original X.I found Thomas Phinney's insights spot on. In my own simplicity, I'd have been as happy to have the top right bar of the "t" shortened to match the top left bar as to have had it lengthened to match the bottom, but I would defer to someone clearly far more knowledgable than I am.
