Hello typographers
I am a hobbyist dabbling into illustration and graphic design and I am trying now for the first time to design a typeface. I'm doing a slab serif roughly inspired by the Proteus Project. I started out with setting Saracen in a low res at small point size, then manually added and removed pixels, then went into illustrator and did some 3d-filters. With that as a basis I am now building my typeface, mostly looking at Acropolis for guidance.
However, I am not at all pleased with how it's looking now. Before I go on to make the rest of the letters (IF I even go on) I would very much appreciate some honest feedback, and some tips maybe on how to get this thing better looking. It doesn't have to become a world class font, I only want the average graphic designer not to see that I made it myself. Thanks in advance for anyone willing to spew some critique!
A technical question also: I am working in Illustrator for now (then copy pasting to fontlab 7), but if I want to change the overall ratios of my letters (let's say make all stems a bit thicker), that is a lot of work (especially since Illustrator won't snap properly and I have to zoom all the time). Is it worth learning fontlab for this? Or is it an equal amount of work in that program?
Also: I am working with an 8 degree angle. But if I copy the letters into Fontlab some angles are 8.1 some are 7.9, and some are even more off. Is this something you worry about? Or do I ignore it? (I guess I know the answer...)
Thank you and all best
JM


Comments
It absolutely is, or any other font editor for that matter.
- Inconsistent blockiness: thanks for pointing it out!
- Starting with an upright version: good to know that this is easier to spot inconsistencies. I'm not sure yet if I will give it a try, because if I ever make an upright, I would like it to have slightly different letterforms (though I realize that what I have here is more of an oblique than a real italic...)
You might find this thread useful. https://typedrawers.com/discussion/2809/italics-angle-compensations. However, your font is much more geometric than handwritten.
I agree the /u is not recognizable. The whitespace is filled in at the bottom in letters like /m and /k, so I don't think you should just flip that to the top in one letter. for the /v and /w, consider a serif at the bottom of the letter like in this sports font.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTA7rMpwooRwmf8xleV0a9GHdu-ZkU8njTF43v1pk7p6X7KETr0
(sorry for raw link my hyperlink keeps breaking)
My opinion:
In the "po" letter combination, the cut in bottom right corner of /p is does not optically go up as high as in the bottom left corner of /o or /e. This doesn't feel as much as an issue in "oq."
The slow tapering at the tail end of /e doesn't match other letters. In the /j and /k you have a strong diagonal angle, use that for reference. You should also edit the /t to match as well.