Comments requested: Bulletin Regular

JDBarry

I call this one "Bulletin Regular". It's a sans serif design. Since it's reminiscent of the white-on-black plastic engraved nameplates used on industrial and research apparatus control panels perhaps 70-75 years ago, when The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was first published, the name is a nod to that publication and that era. Here also is a PDF proof. Not sure what might be desirable in the way of an image, so I skipped that pending further clarification.

This isn't intended for great amounts of texts. Rather, given its background, I'd say its only real use would be as a display font with some sort of retro / period graphics.

By the way, this is my first time going public with anything of this sort.

Chris Lozos

Stem weights are very uneven for what you say you want.  Look how thin the "I" looks. Curves are not smooth, especially where straight meets curve.  What tries to be geometric appears to not be.  Start with the H and O and make these two work with each other.

Mesh your knowledge of "Strength of Materials" with what happens when bending iron rods to understand how straights join curves. Bending metal vs stretching rope or constructing with a wet noodle, gives you a range of behavior.

You might also look up "Leroy Lettering" to find the historical reference for this.

JDBarry

Looks to me like a thorough re-work is in order, including rigorous tangent constructions. If I read you correctly, I need to standardize on stem weights throughout. Not sure what you mean by "start with the H and O and make these two work with each other": pretty vague for a new guy to work with.

By the way, I've seen Leroy lettering in use, albeit ~55 years ago.

Chris Lozos

What I mean is  just work only on the H and O for a while until you understand them and take what you have learned to the rest. Vague can be good, it teaches you to teach yourself.  Look harder until you see more.

"Tangent constructions" can get you in trouble, think more about bending iron rods and what happens to the metal when you try to push it to rigid tangents, There is a resistance in the material that forces the two to either adapt or rupture.

JDBarry

Chris Lozos said:

"Vague can be good, it teaches you to teach yourself.  Look harder until you see more."

Not to be argumentative, but I'm used to engineering, physical science, and math courses where all terms were defined rigorously when introduced such that one concept builds on the preceding one(s). So...not really sure how I would know when I've achieved the required objectives.

Chris Lozos

"...not really sure how I would know when I've achieved the required objectives." is quite normal in type design.  Think more of quantum theory  where you anticipate a path but never have a bell ring that pictures it.  You are reaching for balance, not acquiring confirmation. The eye is the final arbiter but the observer comes in many forms or points of view.

JDBarry

Thanks. In that case, I'd have the final say.

John Savard

I finally decided to have a look at it, to see why the professional type designers here seem to be panning it.

It's clearly a display typeface, so more latitude is available than in one designed for reading of large quantities of text. Still, I can see some grounds for criticism.

Looking at the capital letters:

The line of the capital I needs to be thickened.

The curved bits on the capital D ( and the capital B ) are too small. This is less of a problem with the capital P and R, but they should probably be made consistent.

The capital S doesn't quite fit in.

Making the center of the capital W go up to the top of the letter, while certainly a legitimate option, may need to be reconsidered in this typeface.

Looking at the small letters:

Why is the bottom of the lowercase g so short, and why is there a tail on the q? And the bottom tail of the t is also very short.

Looking at the digits:

Why is the midline so high, when the letters don't have this style?

Maybe those aren't the real flaws in your effort, but instead legitimate unconventional aspects, and the flaws are at another level, though. I do agree that in another kind of typeface, where the other letters also had unusual shapes, indicating that the intent of the typeface was to be a highly decorative and unconventional typeface, these minor eccentricities would be appropriate.

But it looks as though, from most of the letters, that this typeface is not intended to be flamboyant in general, so the few eccentricities don't seem to fit.

Vasil Stanev

Needs more work and has good potential across widths and weights. While individual points may be too many to list, you could always look how previous projects have solved most of the problems. Nowadays there is at least one well developed predecessor for practically every new font - no need to reinvent the wheel (until you do know how).

https://www.fontfabric.com/fonts/gogoia/, which I had the pleasure to work on, is just one example.