Am I anywhere near the right direction?

elnahari
elnahari Posts: 3
in Type Design Critiques
Hello, 
My name is Haitham L. Nahari and I have been freelancing in the field of graphic design for +14 years. For the last few months I have been wondering if I can dive in to the type design world and develop my own fonts.
I know I am a newbie when it comes to type design so I have decided to start with a sans serif thinking that will make my life easier :smiley:

Here are my very 1st letters and I would sincerely appreciate your time reviewing and sharing your inputs on this.
Regards!
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Comments

  • Drawcard
    Drawcard Posts: 73
    edited April 2021
    I think the hyphen might be a fraction too thin. The horizontal bars of the /G/ , /H/ might be just a little too low as well in comparison to the other crossbar in /A/.

    But overall it feels proportionally correct, and is a good first start!
  • Drawcard
    Drawcard Posts: 73
    edited April 2021

    Also with your /3/ try a slightly taller / larger bottom half. It is just a touch too top-heavy and therefore the number looks upside down.
  • elnahari
    elnahari Posts: 3
    Thank you @Drawcard for your time reviewing this and sharing your comments. Really appreciated :smile:
  • Eryk Kosinski
    Eryk Kosinski Posts: 72
    I am a beginner in type design and the best way to learn, at least for me was from books related to type design. The best one for begginers is "Designing Type" by Karen Cheng. 
  • konrad ritter
    konrad ritter Posts: 204
    Mr Phinney, do you have any instructional videos other than the one above, and is there any place where you posted them? I could really stand to learn more. Thank you. 
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,984
    I think the best I can do is point you here: https://www.thomasphinney.com/type-design-resources/

    Not 100% up to date, but a lot of concepts and things are rather evergreen.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,013
    As others have noted, you need to work on a lot of detailed drawing work. It will help to compare your work to an exemplar like Gotham or some other great geometric sans. Compare each character side-by-side and think about what you could do better with yours. Think about what makes yours different and how to keep that feeling throughout your design.

    Another thing to do is just put this away and go design another typeface. Each project teaches you something new, and later you can bring those lessons learned back to your old designs. I always tell people to go design five more fonts and then go back to the beginning and keep refining. Try drawing heavier fonts. I find that it’s easier to add character to heavy letters. And I find it easier to spot flaws in heavy letters.

    Do some reading on drawing letters. Check out Beir’s Type Tricks, Cheng’s Designing Type, Castro’s ABC of Custom Lettering, Young’s Fonts and Logos, and Cabarga’s Logo, Font, and Lettering Bible.
  • elnahari
    elnahari Posts: 3
    @Thomas Phinney
    @James Puckett

    This is gold! I can't thank you enough.
  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 319
    edited April 2021
    Nice start! :) As per your lowercase n and m, I would say their top-right arches (around 1.5 o'clock) are a bit shallow. Also, the joint of their arches with the stem could be somewhat thinner.
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,459
    Given the circle-heavy geometry of the letters, the question mark feels very slack, and also needs some attention to stroke weight consistency.

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