Hello all,
I hope my somewhat frequent feedback requests aren't starting to annoy anybody. What can I say, this is a great community and I honestly have no other place to get such high quality CC.
I started this a while back and have been chipping at it slowly. It's a blackletter (nothing more specific than that, it draws from all sorts of styles) without a single sharp angle. Purpose is obviously display. I've looked a lot at how Cooper Oswald treated an oldstyle to end up with Cooper Black, trying to apply similar logic. I imagine this typeface as having been painted with a heavily loaded elliptical brush, with some nib rotation here and there.
The default caps are simplified and a bit Romanized, in order to be easily recognizable by a layman, and also in order to work in an all-caps setting (I know all-caps blackletter is frowned upon, but people love it anyway--might as well work with it). In addition to that I've made a set of funkier Fraktur-ish swash caps, for the blackletter connoisseur. These are, for now, less important and more of a secondary feature.
x-height is quite large, with very short ascenders and descenders, to get that 'tubby' feel of Cooper Black, and to allow tight leading.
Besides completing the character set, I want to try really pushing the weight and making an ultra black version of this, and also think a light version and a gothicized italic could be cool... but for now, I'd love to hear if anybody sees obvious flaws.
Thank you in advance!


Comments
/T seems light. My eye gets hung up on /h. Tittles feel flattened. Asterisk may be too geometric. Are /s and maybe /m too wide? And regular /A and /M look wide also. /G looks too /C-like.
Some initial thoughts:
- Like Craig said, the first thing that stuck out to me was the geometric / sharp feeling asterisk. May be the case for the exclamation mark too but not as drastic. Wish I had suggestions as to how to improve but needs more "blob"

- The descender of the "h" is rad, but maybe better to have as an alternate. Totally up to you, though! I think the simple leg of the "n" may be a better approach for the default.
- Would love to see a bit more space between the bowl of the "d" and the ascender. Since it's jutting inward, I think a bit more negative space in there could help with legibility.
- Cap _S_ may be optically leaning left just a bit?
- I'd have to see them in context but I'm thinking your capital round characters may be a bit too light (O, C, G, Q)
Really really love this, excited to see more!My favourite bits are /b /p /q
My observations:
/s a touch too wide?
/p and /q/ have less dense decenders with the diamond removed, which is good for texture but I'm not entirely sure if I prefer it. Opinions welcome.
/h has been straightened out a little, no more wiggly leg. I do prefer the historical descending leg, but made an alt with an /n-like leg as @Scott Biersack suggested.
Tittles in black look still more squooshed. In both, you might consider cheating the stem of /i and /j a little shorter to make more room for a taller dot.
Do you plan to support languages with diacritics? Headspace for those will be something else to solve if so.
This way you could remain true to the Fraktur source material while still appealing to a broader market
Overall, loving the new single story "g" and new "y" as well. Would love to continue seeing it with more context rather than single letterforms on their own. Helpful to see how it all interacts with other letterforms in words, paragraphs, etc.
I really really love your alphabet as it is I'm just sharing the link.
@Nick Curtis Thank you! And I think I like the original g and y best, so the new ones will be the alternates probably.
@Nathan Zimet Damn that’s cool. Thanks for sharing.
One challenge, compared to the regular, was maintaining consistency in both stroke weight and texture. There had to be some compromises, obviously, most of all in the Fraktur caps.
There's plenty of little kinks to smoothen out, spacing has been neglected and I haven't even started kerning yet.
Anyway, thoughts and feedback welcome as always.