Designed my first font for a fashion brand logo. How did I do so far?

Christian Thalmann

Definitely keep three lines in the capitals.

I agree the slanted stress axis in /o/ is perhaps more of a distraction than a benefit. I would also bring the two lines on each side of /o/ closer together to match the stroke color in the straight letters.

Cristóbal Alarcón

Ok. I think this could be the final final version. Sorry for the annoyance.

• Smaller tweaks to the /t/. Decreased the left arm a bit to be optically similar to the top /i/ serif, changed its top serif to be straight.
• Reduced de axis rotation from the /e/ and /o/, but it still has some slight rotation.
  
• Reduced the letter /o/ white space width to match the rest of the letters
• Changed the serif of the /s/ making it a bit more vertical, reduced its white space width to keep up with the other letters, lowered a bit the bottom serif.
• Increased a tiny bit the width of the right vertical stem of the /n/, for optical reasons.
• Letters /o/ /s/ /e/ /n/ and /t/ have increased overshoot.
• Tweaked the kerning a bit, but I'm still kind of unsure on this one.

Here are the two versions overlapped

Craig Eliason

Cristóbal Alarcón said:

Hey! Sorry for kinda ghosting. I will address the comments.

Craig Eliason said:

Lots of kerning work to do. And I wonder if the bowls of the Ps should be a little narrower.

There was, in fact, someone that suggested that the bowl of the P should be a bit wider. I guess now that this point comes from personal preference?

Well, my suggestion came from my response that the straight stem of the P's feels a long way away from the lowercase and there's a space below the P bowl that could be closed up a bit. 

As for kerning, the trick is to look at three consecutive letters in a row and make sure optically the middle one always seems to be centered between its neighbors. In your "final version," if I look at "son" the o appears to be closer to the s, in "iso" the s appears to be a touch closer to the i, etc.

Agree that the three-line caps are working. 

Claudio Piccinini

It’s nice but I would still keep a vertical axis in the /o (and readjust the /e a bit accordingly, i.e. prolonging the stroke endings at the top to the same height, as you more or less have in /s).
In the end, it’s a "modern" weight treatment, not "transitional".

Jasper de Waard

@Cristóbal Alarcón it's not annoying to see your progress. Better show too many then too few images. But I would recommend not to call any design 'final' unless you've not looked at it for a week and still like it. If you don't have a strict deadline, that is.

AbiRasheed

I think most of your letters have matching inline space now, although the rounded letters could reduce a tad more. As for the 2 vs 3 inline, 2 keeps it consistent with the rest of the wordmark, you could keep a 3 inline version for an icon I guess. In the comparison example you posted, you haven't proportionally scaled down some of the ornamentation which may be why the version with the 2 inline looks weird. I'd say the drop ornamentation below /P or the curl in the middle should ideally be smaller when you go from 3 -> 2 so it appears like it's part of it rather than tacked-on elements.

Cristóbal Alarcón

Craig Eliason said:

Well, my suggestion came from my response that the straight stem of the P's feels a long way away from the lowercase and there's a space below the P bowl that could be closed up a bit. 

As for kerning, the trick is to look at three consecutive letters in a row and make sure optically the middle one always seems to be centered between its neighbors. In your "final version," if I look at "son" the o appears to be closer to the s, in "iso" the s appears to be a touch closer to the i, etc.

Agree that the three-line caps are working. 

Hmm, yeah. There is kind of a considerable amount of white space between the P and the lowercase. I'll play around with that.

Didn't know about the "looking at three letters kerning" method (if there is a proper name for that method let me know). About the "iso" the /s/ being a bit closer to the /i/, I try but I can't see it like that, in fact, for me it's a bit closer to the /o/ (I'm not questioning you btw, it's what I see)

Cristóbal Alarcón

Claudio Piccinini said:

In the end, it’s a "modern" weight treatment, not "transitional".

Maybe I'm trying something that's not possible, but couldn't it be both "modern" and have transitional features?

Cristóbal Alarcón

Jasper de Waard said:

@Cristóbal Alarcón it's not annoying to see your progress. Better show too many then too few images. But I would recommend not to call any design 'final' unless you've not looked at it for a week and still like it. If you don't have a strict deadline, that is.

Will do!

AbiRasheed

Quick sketch to give you an idea of using a 2 inline stroke. link to [example]. I think the drop at the bottom looks odd and takes away from the /P so I omitted that in the sketch. 

Cristóbal Alarcón

AbiRasheed said:

I think most of your letters have matching inline space now, although the rounded letters could reduce a tad more.

Oh, didn't noticed that. I originally had an established "wideness" for all the letters, but I guess I deviated a bit as the design progressed. Nice catch.

AbiRasheed said:

Quick sketch to give you an idea of using a 2 inline stroke. link to [example]. I think the drop at the bottom looks odd and takes away from the /P so I omitted that in the sketch. 

About the two lines idea, I presented it to the client but she's completely sold out to the 3-line version, and to be honest, I'm too. As I said (and you also said) the 3-line version could be used for icon/display porpuses, and the 2-line version could be used for headers and headlines for reading purposes (If I ever do a full type based on this). But for now, I think the 3-line version works as it is.

Claudio Piccinini

Cristóbal Alarcón said:

Claudio Piccinini said:

In the end, it’s a "modern" weight treatment, not "transitional".

Maybe I'm trying something that's not possible, but couldn't it be both "modern" and have transitional features?

"Modern" here it’s not intended in the generic use of the word (be it to indicate something recent/contemporary or implying modernist conceptions). Rather it’s in its specific typographic meaning, which indicates – precisely – the historical unfolding of typographic forms, subsequent to transitional types, to modern types characterized by a vertical axis (Bodoni and Didot, notably).
So, in short: no, it’s either modern or transitional. If you try to mix the things and achieve an accomplished viable alternative, you have "overcome" post-modernist reflections, but it’s not an easy task.
i.e. my recurring question: what happens after post-modernism?

Cristóbal Alarcón

Claudio Piccinini said:

So, in short: no, it’s either modern or transitional. If you try to mix the things and achieve an accomplished viable alternative, you have "overcome" post-modernist reflections, but it’s not an easy task.

Oooohh I definitely like the sounds of post-modernism, that style does indeed resonates with me. Why isn't it an easy task tho?

Claudio Piccinini said:

i.e. my recurring question: what happens after post-modernism?

What comes after post-modernism could be a regression to previous existing styles. Like, for example, haircut styles. What's trending right now it's what was trending decades ago, but with some modifications. Or is that just another form of post-modernism?

Cristóbal Alarcón

Anyways, here I come again with the new observations. Does it comes as an appropriate post-modern piece?

• Letter /P/ bowl has been reduced.
• Letters /s/ and /o/ wideness has been reduced.
• Letters /e/ and /o/ inner axis has been shifted to barely almost vertical.
• Kerning tweaked, but still in doubt.

The two versions overlapped.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Just nudge "ison" slightly to the left, and the "n" a hair more.

Christian Thalmann

Looking good!

I just wondered whether the top /P/ could ditch the curls on its foot and instead point directly toward the bottom /P/'s stem... perhaps instead of the spiral flourish, the end of the top /P/'s bowl could instead swing around and join the top of the second /P/'s bowl as in a boustrophedon...? (Probably too kitschy?)

Craig Eliason

Hrant H. Papazian said:

Just nudge "ison" slightly to the left, and the "n" a hair more.

I think that would fix Poison but then make sure it doesn't look overall tight compared to Petit. 

Is it just me or do the leftmost two strokes of /e define a narrower white space between them than the leftmost two strokes of /o. Those should match optically. 

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Craig Eliason said:
I think that would fix Poison but then make sure it doesn't look overall tight compared to Petit. 

I'm thinking "Petit" should be slightly looser to make up for its shortness, but maybe you're right (and my suggestion should be flipped).

Cristóbal Alarcón

Oh my, we are reaching stages that are out of trained design eye. I honestly can't see what you guys are pointing out about the kerning suggestions, if it wasn't for you I wouldn't even know about this.

Still, I tried them out. Here's how they look like, despite that I can't see a difference if I don't look at them really really hard.

PS. The /e/ left white space stroke is noted, yet to be changed.

Overlapped

Cristóbal Alarcón

Christian Thalmann said:

Looking good!

I just wondered whether the top /P/ could ditch the curls on its foot and instead point directly toward the bottom /P/'s stem...

Hmm, the ornaments were an actual goal for the "eye calling" the client wanted to. If I remove the top /P/ vertical stem curls the consistency feels kinda weird to me

Christian Thalmann said:

perhaps instead of the spiral flourish, the end of the top /P/'s bowl could instead swing around and join the top of the second /P/'s bowl as in a boustrophedon...? (Probably too kitschy?)

Hmm not sure about this one. Unifying both /P/s gives a weird visual flow, creating both a vertical and horizontal flow from the top /P/.

Ps. I googled boustrophedon but nothing baroque related appears heh. What's that?

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

"Boustrophedon" means "as the ox plows", pertaining to lines of text that alternate in direction, with the letters [typically] flipped to match. So if a line is going rightward, the next line will go leftward (and something like "R" will be rendered "Я"*) and then rightward for the next one.

* Sorry, I cheated by using Cyrillic.

Jasper de Waard

You're getting very close! What other people have noted before, but I'm not sure you understood correctly, is that the Petit is much more losely spaced than the Poison. This could be on purpose, to make them more equal in length, but personally I would prefer to see equal spacing. You might even consider making the t a little narrower to decrease the whitespace on its right.

This has also been said already, but try to make your e and o match a little better on the left curve.

Your n has a bit of a kink on top. This might be a feature, but I think I'd prefer a more smooth ('normal') curve there.

Cristóbal Alarcón

Hrant H. Papazian said:

"Boustrophedon" means "as the ox plows", pertaining to lines of text that alternate in direction, with the letters [typically] flipped to match. So if a line is going rightward, the next line will go leftward (and something like "R" will be rendered "Я"*) and then rightward for the next one.

* Sorry, I cheated by using Cyrillic.

So, is a boustrophedon a mirrored version of a letter? I'm having a hard time understanding what it is.

EDIT: 

So, is it like reading both in left and right direction at the same time?

Cristóbal Alarcón

Jasper de Waard said:

(...) is that the Petit is much more losely spaced than the Poison. (...)

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH

Now, for some reason, after reading that I actually started to see what you guys were pointing out... I hope so.

Jasper de Waard said:

 You might even consider making the t a little narrower to decrease the whitespace on its right.

Yeah, I thought it was too, but no one pointed it out, so I thought it wasn't that big deal.  I've updated it now along with the /e/

Cristóbal Alarcón

This is way harder than I thought it would be, but I think I'm finally coming to an end.

New changes!

• Kerning adjustments; loosened up "ison" and tightened up "etit" a bit.
  
• Made the /e/ optically similar to the /o/.
• Reduced the white space on the right side of the /t/.
• Changed the top curve of the /n/ slightly to a more rounded style, making it more consistent with the fonts in which the type is inspired.

Overlapped

Jasper de Waard

Nice! Now move the right t a little to the left and your spacing is done.

You can keep fiddling around with this design for ages, but I think it's at a pretty decent level now. Would like to see some 'in use' samples when the time comes

Christian Thalmann

Aren't /e/o/s/ still a bit lighter in the stem (due to more air inside the strokes) than the other letters?

Might /s/ look better with a suggestion of a serif at the top to mirror the one on the bottom?

Might the drop look better if it were lowered just a bit so as to give it a more visible separation from the interior stroke of /P/?

I agree, it's in good shape now.

Cristóbal Alarcón

Jasper de Waard said:

Nice! Now move the right t a little to the left and your spacing is done.

You can keep fiddling around with this design for ages, but I think it's at a pretty decent level now. Would like to see some 'in use' samples when the time comes

Oh, you will! I'll make sure that you guys see it first. It wouldn't have been possible without your help. Thanks a lot!

Cristóbal Alarcón

Christian Thalmann said:

Aren't /e/o/s/ still a bit lighter in the stem (due to more air inside the strokes) than the other letters?

Hmm I saw in a page, shared as a resource around here, stating that the more contrasting the letter is in its thick-thin structure, to compensate, its stems should be wider. So I followed that principle.

Christian Thalmann said:

Might /s/ look better with a suggestion of a serif at the top to mirror the one on the bottom?

Nice catch, but I tested it out and it kinda makes some noise for me. Besides, I wanna move to the color palette and applications of the logo.

Christian Thalmann said:

Might the drop look better if it were lowered just a bit so as to give it a more visible separation from the interior stroke of /P/?

I agree, it's in good shape now.

Some tweaking could be made, we'll see.

Jasper de Waard

Hmm I saw in a page, shared as a resource around here, stating that the more contrasting the letter is in its thick-thin structure, to compensate, its stems should be 
wider. So I followed that principle.

True, but you overdid it. In a design like yours, the visual thickness is mostly determined by the white in between the black lines. If you look at that, the difference between curves and straights is very large. Also, it's easily solved by making the straights a little thicker