
This is Baguettes (working title).
It's the first work I've felt confident enough to show you all.
My key question: am I heading the right direction, please?
Plenty of books say that you should make sure you get your early glyphs as good as possible, to avoid multiplying mistakes across the whole set of characters. What should I change, please, to prevent this?
Technical stuff: I created this using Glyphs. I drew some caricature extreme light and heavy weights (thanks
@Ray Larabie for that tip); the third line is my "regular" that I designed before I learned about the possibilities of interpolation.
Best wishes, and thanks in advance. Andrew.
Comments
In the light:
Overall/elsewhere:
In the heaviest weight, look at the thinnest part of the n and h. Compare with the same part of the d. They don't need to be exactly the same but I think the difference is too much.
It seems like the light weight has similar sidebearings to the heavy with some padding. That can work for most glyphs but pay special attention to LTft. The kerning and sidebearings for those are very different. I know you don't have an L yet but think about a fat L...in general The right side is like a wall, feels like it needs more room when it's adjacent to a flat-sided letter like H and physically can't tuck under U. Now think about a thin L. That feels more balanced when it's tighter to a flat-sided letter and will tuck neatly under U. A similar thing happens with f and t. The decision of how long the crossbars will be and how tight the sidebearings will be is partly determined by the rhythm. Before you go further, get that sorted out. You should be able to type nnnfnnnntnnn and it flows with no distracting gaps.
In the heavy, you've got a steady rhythm. In the light, you have an erratic rhythm. Make the heavy erratic or the think steady...or a bit of both.
BTW this is quite decent for a first effort.
And thanks for the compliment. :-)
And an "H".
The safest "g" would be a monocular one. But most chances I get I recommend trying the under-rated Koch form, like in FF Ernestine:
http://ernestinefont.com/
I did a video a while back on how to space a font. You might find it useful, regardless of what tool you use. I am doing it in FontLab Studio 5, but the principles are not tool-specific. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbc_O7bNROs
Many thanks everyone. Lots to digest. It took me five weeks last time to make (most of) the changes suggested. I hope I'll be a bit quicker this time.