Synthium Display

Thomas Weakley

@Christian Thalmann Great feedback! Thank you. 

I agree with you about /N/ but I'm attached to it at this point so I think offering a more standard alternative would be perfect. It does remind me of certain fonts where a crossed W or another non-standard character sticks out. One thing I explored was trying to mirror the style of /N/ with the /Z/ but I couldn't make it work.

I'll work on making the center of /5/ slightly more rigid. 

Thomas Weakley

Here's a quick screenshot of the accents. 

I referenced "Designing Type" by Karen Cheng for info on most of them. Unfortunately the book does not have a chapter on the Ogonek and a few others so I referenced Wikipedia and archives here to help me understand. 

I tried to impart the style of the letterforms on the diacritical marks. I may have gone overboard with the Ogonek and Cedilla. Although I've seen them executed similarly by reputable foundries. 

I rounded the apex of the circumflex to mirror the rounded bends in the rest of the typeface. I'm hoping this is not something that is frowned upon. I'm wondering if I should now go back and round the standalone circumflex and less than/greater than signs (^<>).

Please let me know if I've made a faux-pas with any of these!

Thomas Weakley

Also can anyone tell me how many languages this character set will support?

Vasil Stanev

Hello Thomas ,

there is a tool I used some time ago that checks language coverage, but I would be hard pressed to remember the name. And I remember it featured Klingon (a made-up language), so I'm not completely sure it was accurate.

   I think you could balance the weight of the diacritics better, if the acute is your starting point, the breve, caron/circumflex, ring should be heavier. The overall appearance is bold-ish, and so also should be the diacritics. The cedilla is lighter than the commaaccent, BTW.

   The ogonek could use some work. If you have detached the cedilla, maybe a detached ogonek could 'work'. In any case it should be centered on the I and attached to the right part of the U. OE is much broader than it should be, you can harmlessly squeeze the width along the horizontal parts. Same goes for AE.

The Thorn should have its bowl centered on the stem.

It's great that you knew to use a comma for Ľ and not an acute! (Gosh, I'm loving the new board font!) Push the comma to the right, though. I was told it should reside in the upper right corner of the rectangle that the L builds the left corner of. Maybe some Czech or Slovakian speakers can correct that.

Check the width for consistency. Easiest way that I know of is to type vertically in a graphic editor. W looks WAY to big to me, and its feet are somewhat out of place in the overall style.

I like the progress you made, keep it up!

Ray Larabie

I'd make the end of the ogonek more like the shape of the C or perhaps completely open like the S. I'd slant the end of the crossbar on the Eth to match the E but maybe that's a personal thing that I do...in sans serif typefaces I like to make them visually related if possible. I used to think joining the ring to the A was a cool thing to do but have since learned that it's more of an "if you must" type of option...if vertical space is at a premium. In this case it seems like there's a lot of headroom available. For this kind of all caps typeface, I think the comma accent is using too much vertical space. Maybe reduce the height about 25%. The way it is now, it's low hanging fruit that might cause collision issues. Picture where this style of typeface might be used: car windshield graphics, labels on electronic devices etc. Some of the rules that make a text typeface more readable can be a burden in an all caps display typeface.

In techno/ultramodern styles, using a macron as the tilde can be a stylish choice. In display type, there are probably no situations where a macron and a tilde would need to be visually distinguished. If you think it might be a better stylistic fit to use a flat tilde, go for it. Because, let's face it...a wavy tilde isn't techno.

Adam Jagosz

For ogonek, just leave out the last upward turn — terminate it on the horizontal stroke, like the cedilla. There is no space for an upward hook and no need for it. It could be a bit heavier.

Detached ogonek = dangerous territory. In Polish, ą and ę with ogoneks separated from bases leave a weird impression, I feel the discomfort physically in my nose as I try to hear the nasal vowel in my head but it comes out non-nasal.

You might get away with just a single straight angled (NE–SW, like this /) line, connected to the base. Not a terribly common thing, but it would fit in with this style.

Christian Thalmann

Personally, I find accents with angled tops and flat bottoms weird. I’ve switched to using horizontal cuts on both sides; works particularly well with a bold geometric. 

Paul Hanslow

Adam Jagosz said:

Detached ogonek = dangerous territory. In Polish, ą and ę with ogoneks separated from bases leave a weird impression, I feel the discomfort physically in my nose as I try to hear the nasal vowel in my head but it comes out non-nasal.

Adam, I agree with you re detached ogoneks. Out of interest have you noticed detached ogoneks in signage etc? Not to derail the thread but I'd be interested to see examples, regardless of how crude or misinformed they are. Inbox me if you wish.

Thomas, the ogonek on the cap /I hangs to the left too much in my opinion. It should be somewhat centred under the glyph. I think Vasil already addressed this in his comments though. 


The /tilde accent looks light in colour compared to the other accents. I'd also move it up to optically align better with the other accents. The /tilde may just look low due to the being close to the /Ncircumflex whose accent is vertically higher.

Thomas Weakley

@Vasil Stanev @Ray Larabie @Adam Jagosz @Paul Hanslow @Christian Thalmann 

Thank you all so much for the thoughtful, constructive feedback!

I did my best to implement most of your feedback on the accents. Although I did play it safe with the ogonek and the tilde. I like the approach of horizontal cuts on the tops and bottoms of the accents. That helped me to keep the proportions in order and it seemed to fit more with the constructed style. 

I've done another round of revisions to the numbers and letters. I fixed the 5 with advice from Christian and took most of @Michael Vokits advice on the other characters. I see what folks are saying about the color being a bit heavy in the corners of /V /W but I'm having trouble finding a solution for that without doing away with the rounded bends and switching to a blunted bend. I've tried pulling the corners in more but the effect it has on the diagonal stroke thickness seems to be too much. I may be at a stalemate there. 

I've got a few more special characters and punctuation to add but I included the Yen, copyright, and trademark symbols. The standalone tilde feels a little light to me now so I may have some work to do on that.

I've also added many of the alternates. I let myself get a little crazy with them. I have an artboard where I'm playing with different words using alternate combos and I've been having a lot of fun with it. I'll organize and post those samples soon for more context.

Thomas Phinney

Trivia point: The ® is most commonly raised like the ™. (Except in fonts designed for low-res legibility.)

Thomas Weakley

Good note @Thomas Phinney . Thank you!

Adding a PDF of the image posted above in case anyone wants to take a closer look.

After getting fresh eyes on this and doing some prints I think I need to do some work to lighten slanted /M and /W alternates. Maybe some work on Z. The base horizonatal feels a little lighter than the top. 

Adam Jagosz

Your ogoneks don't have overlap resolved which results in a thin white line in some renderers:

You can make it easier for the overlaps to be resolved upon export if you make the ogonek component overlap the base by at least 1 unit.

As for the shape, maybe make it more angular, triangular? I'd try to avoid that bulge and try to make it more monolinear.

Thomas Weakley

@Adam Jagosz Thank you and good catch on the ogonek.

Here are few riffs on a more angular ogonek. Options 3 and 4 match well with the form of /A but I think it will look a little funky with more rounded characters. Option 1 seems like a good balance.

Adam Jagosz

Agreed, the triangular shape was worth a shot, but turned out too funky. Option 1 looks nice and balanced. I'm only triggered by its lightness, but maybe it's fine in context and in smaller sizes.

Thomas Weakley

On a side note learning FontForge and type design has been very time-consuming over the last three years. My girlfriend has proclaimed this morning that this typeface will probably be finished just in time to engrave on my headstone. 

I should probably not tell her that people sometimes spend 10+ years working on one type family. 

Thomas Weakley

There is still a little work to be done, especially on the alternatives but Synthium is in now a in beta testing mode with alternatives and Latin accents! 

I'm super excited to have made it this far. Thanks so much everyone!

More samples to come.

Jasper de Waard

The alternate characters are making this quite cool. I would focus on also adding a lot of discretionary ligatures. ST in BEASTMODE is a start, but I'm sure there's room for more. The way a lot of the alternates slide into each other (e.g. AR in HARDCORE) also suggests a ligature to me. How are you incorporating that (feature-wise) into the font?

Craig Eliason

I still agree with the earlier comment that the /N/ is the wrong shape for this font.

Thomas Weakley

@Jasper de Waard Thank you! I have been having lots of fun playing with the characters. Currently I have all of the alternate characters like the slanted /AR/ set up as open type substitutions. I do plan to create ligatures but I'm still figuring out how to set that up to match with the letter spacing. I envision many of the ligatures — especially the slanted ones — to work better with a tighter letter spacing than I have envisioned for the typeface as a whole I'm still trying to figure out how to balance that. I don't want the user to turn on a ligature and then have to kern the rest of the word to match but I suppose that would be easier than having to select each character as an alternate and then adjust the spacing.

If anyone has any resources they can share for best practices on ligatures that would be helpful. I think the book I have has a short chapter on ligatures which I'll read tonight. 

@Craig Eliason Thank you for the feedback! I have created a normal /N/ but right now it is only accessible as an alternate. After this feedback I am considering setting the "Blade Runner N" as an alternate and using the normal /N/

Here's a sample that shows both:

Paul Miller

The second version is much better to my eyes.  It fits in with the rest of the font.

Thomas Weakley

@Paul Miller Thank you for the feedback!

Christian Thalmann

Yes, that second one should probably be the default /N/. You might also want to consider an /n/-shaped /N/ (with a right angle at the top left and a curve at the top right) as another alternate.

Thomas Weakley

@Christian Thalmann You're right. I think it's time to let go of the idea of using the Blade Runner /N as the default. Also I love your suggestion for the alternate! I'll certainly include it. Thanks for chiming in again!

Thomas Weakley

Huge milestone here.

Just fixed the last extrema issue.

Steve Gardner

The /C and /G have angled terminals whereas everything else (/2, /3, /5, /9, /?, /&) are square... is that intentional?

Also, the different styles for the /6 and /9?

Thomas Weakley

@Steve Gardner Thanks for taking the time to comment. I had trouble making the angled terminals work in the numbers. To me they looked aesthetically pleasing on /C, /G, the tops of /6 and /5 but on the others you mentioned  (/2, /3, /5, /9, /?, /&)  the angled terminals looked odd and distracting to me and I couldn't make them work. In my first few versions I had them on /2, /3 and /? but I phased them out in my revisions. I think it was because the numbers are more complex forms and the angled terminals seemed to compete or not line up with the other elements of the form. I see the issue in consistency. Do you think it's worth revisiting?

And the different styles for /6 and /9 was at one time intentional. I think originally it had to do with me deciding to make the counter of /6 larger than that of /9 to make them feel different therefore I did not have as much room to add a curve before the top terminal on /6. That got carried over as I pushed the typeface further and balanced the counters of the two numbers. Perhaps the /6 and /9 should be of a more unified style. Which style do you think feels better? That of / 6 or /9? 

K Pease

Differentiating /6 and /9 is a good idea in principle. That said, /6 fits the style better whereas the /9 here is overly closed and doesn't pass the blurry vision test to be easily distinct from /8. If anything, truncate the tail of /9 even shorter, like midpoint short.

Tré Seals

Hi Thomas, Love the progress you've made on this. I out of D.C. as well and would love to catch up once this craziness is over. I just wanted to inquire about the varied spacing in the 'AR' ligature. I noticed that it has more spacing in "ANARCHY" vs "HARDCORE." Is that an alternate?

Thomas Weakley

@Tré Seals Thanks for chiming in! I follow you on a few platforms and I really dig your work. It'd be great to catch up when things go back to normal. 

When I did the sample above I had the slanted /A and /R set up as alternates and I was kerning them individually. That's where the inconsistency came from. After playing with the alternates and getting feedback I realized that these combinations would be more user-friendly as discretionary ligatures. For the last few weeks I've been working on the ligatures and I've been making sure they're consistently spaced. One thing I've been wrestling with is balancing the letter spacing of the default characters to coincide with the the tighter ligatures. I designed the typeface to have a somewhat loose, default letter spacing (See "NICK NOLTE" sample above). So when you choose a tight ligature like 'AR' the word looks better if you reduce the tracking. I keep thinking it would be nice if all of the the ligatures fit well without the user having to make any adjustments to accommodate them but I'm not sure if that's possible. I may be overthinking it. For me, making adjustments to the type is part of the fun with a display face. 

Here's a screenshot of my ligatures and alternates. I've got nearly 70 ligatures and 70 alternate so far.

Thomas Weakley

I want to give a sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to give me feedback. You all are beyond awesome! 

This project continued to take shape after my last post. I ended up designing hundreds of discretionary ligatures and alternates.

If anyone wants to see where this ended up I'll add a link below to the Behance.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/100499141/Synthium-Display-Typeface

If you gave me feedback here and would like an .otf to play with let me know and I'll send you one!

Many thanks!