Ogonek Positioning - Heavy Capital A

Nikola Kostic

Hi everyone,

A question for Ogonek users. Does this positioning on the Heavy style look natural? I would love to get a comment from a Polish native.

Christian Thalmann

It feels a bit timid compared to the regular. Maybe make the bottom fatter and the join a bit thinner?

I'd consider decomposing the glyph and getting rid of the break at the joint between the ogonek and the sole of /A/.

Check out this page for more details.

Adam Jagosz

In general, what Christian said. My first thought was Context, please (as in other letters next to it, e.g. MRUGNĄŁ RZĘSĄ), and my second would be to try to make the ogonek as wide as the leg itself so that it appears as a logical conclusion and not an afterthought, but that might be tricky and requires consideration with black designs.

Then again, don't forget about Lithuanian and Native American users

Vasil Stanev

Push it lower by the same logic because of which heavy weights often have a higher x-hight.

Nikola Kostic

Thanks for your answers everyone. I really should have explained my dilemma better. I have an urge to move the Ogonek to the right a bit, so it sits in the middle of the A's stem. But from all the examples I've seen, everyone keeps the Ogonek to the left of the stem. In the Regular weight that is barely noticeable, but in Heavy it really sticks out. Here's how it looks in a better example:
Should I move it to the right a bit or leave it as is? 

Adam Jagosz

It doesn't look too bad. I've also seen lots of Ą's with the ogonek to the left of the stem, but indeed my preference is that it is flush with the right side, more so than not. But in this case if you move it to the right without making it wider, it will lose its angle with the left side of the stem.

Show us the acute as well! ŚWIĄT ÓSMĄ POSIĄŚĆ That will tell us how dark the ogonek can go without looking odd. But judging by the Ł, not much.

Adam Twardoch

The shape, weight and size of the ogonek is very good. As for the placement beneath Ą, I used to be adamant about it — it "had to" be left-aligned. Now I’m much more tolerant, actually Now I say: you CAN move it to the right so it’s visually centered.  

BUT there is another problem. The "slash" element in Ł is TOO THIN, and the right side is too short. Should be more like this:



Whether the "slash" is cut vertically or at a slight diagonal angle — that depends on other elements. I usually make it depend on the treatment of the tops of WVXY. If they’re horizontal, then the "slash" should cut vertically. If they’re more like in Syntax, then they can be cut diagonally. 

Nikola Kostic

Thanks @Adam Twardoch, I really appreciate your input. I've decided to leave the Ogonek as it was, but I did change the "slash" per your advice. Here's how it looks now:

Thomas Phinney

Lowercase l-slash looks super low to me.

General practice is to put it visually centered (top to bottom). Tomaszewski (more controversially) suggests even higher, centered relative to the bar of the “t”. But either way, yours is too low.

The lowercase seems a bit lighter than the caps, but its weight also varies a bit excessively from letter to letter. When I see the “Koń” it seems like the /K and /o are of similar weight, but /n is far lighter.

Adam Jagosz

I think the /lslash is fine for this face, just look how neatly it accomodates the /w. It feels at home to me and reads well.

Christian Thalmann

Isn't the kreska a bit too slanted, for that matter?

Adam Jagosz

To me it's fine, but I'm from the careless generation Y. (Honestly, with black types, I don't think there's any point in making the kreska more vertical — it will only make ź too similar to ż.)

Adam Twardoch

I would move the "slash" in lc ł up so that its right-top corner aligns with the x-height, but the rest it very fine.

Jani Paavola

Christian Thalmann said:

...

Check out this page for more details.

I’ll be redrawing some ogoneks tomorrow. 

Helmut Wollmersdorfer

As somebody not used to read Polish I recognised the diacritic over Z and z as macron. Maybe use a quad with hard (not rounded) corners as dot above. A native would recognise it as a dot, because of whole word tolerance. Like somebody used to read German would recognise other shapes than two dots (double quote, slanted double quote) over a vocal as "Umlaut".

Why the rounded corners of the dot above /i?

/Z and /z look like /=. Again no problem for natives as single z in a word frequency list of Polish has rank 4. Also I have no idea how to change it without loosing the quad/circled characteristic of the design.

Adam Twardoch

It’s not just “whole word tolerance”. The tolerance for diacritical marks is even higher.

In many languages that only have one kind of mark above letters, “anything” above the letter will be recognized as that mark — a square, a circle, a flat rectangle, some oblique shape, a star...

If a language has two kinds of above-letter marks, only some minimal differentiation is needed. 

For display fonts, such formal reduction is quite possible. Very “clear” diacritical marks are only needed for text typefaces, mostly those intended for wife usage that includes scientific or linguistic setting.