Reviving an old project

Steve Gardner

Sample text incorporating lc, UC, numerals and some punctuation.

Also added bar to the /J

Craig Eliason

Looking good. I like that J. 
The /w may be a bit dark (or monolinear, as Christian had said about the /x).

Steve Gardner

Thanks @Craig Eliason, I tweaked the /w to lighten it a bit.

Also included numerals.  Been battling a bit with the old style—do you think they work?

Steve Gardner

A few changes, mainly small with a number of notable exceptions. 

The OS /8 has been redrawn; and I've been experimenting with an ascender on the OS /4, which I didn't expect to like as much as I do.

Craig Eliason

I was going to suggest an ascender for /four.osf, but perhaps it doesn't need to go up all the way to the level of /six.osf & /eight.osf. 
Are the descenders of oldstyle five and especially three a little anemic? And that acute angle in the middle of /five.osf might seem more tightly wound than the other figures.

Steve Gardner

Haha, I'll probably revisit the OS /4 at some point, but I do rather like it.

The issue I had with the descenders of the OS /3 and OS /5 is that they need to be light here to fit the pen logic of the font (see the /2).  Also, I wanted them to have a different form to the lining figures and many of the fonts I referenced for inspiration have very thin descenders.  That said, I'll try adding just a touch of weight.

As for the bowl of the OS /5, this wasn't the first form I experimented with.  I tried something a bit flatter (see 2nd row in image below), but abandoned it in favour of something that was closer to the OS /3.

Do you think something along the lines of the original form works better?

Thomas Phinney

I wonder if something in between the two versions of the 5 might be even better?

And the 3 currently has a top curve, and then a bottom piece that springs off of it at an angle. I wonder if it might work better as a merging of equals? Keep the same position of the center, but have the bottom curve merge into it. (Or to put it another way, instead of making the 5 more like the bottom 3, perhaps make the 3 a bit more like the top 5.)

Steve Gardner

Thanks @Thomas Phinney, I will experiment along the lines you've suggested.

I took a step away from the numerals to revisit the Greek.  Still undecided whether to include it.  Any thoughts?  Does it have enough promise to spend more time on it, or do you think I should abandon it?

Craig Eliason

I think the style concept befits Greek well, and what you have looks like a promising start (to my still-novice eye). /sigma bowl looks wide. Is /tau horizontal light? Does the crossover of /alpha get too dark?

Steve Gardner

Thanks for taking a look, @Craig Eliason.

The /alpha has been bothering me.  I think it's typically drawn with a different stress.  I'll try to rework it.

Agree about the /tau's bar (also the /pi).  The /sigma was wider.  It was originally modelled on the /omicron, but I subsequently narrowed the omicron and didn't do likewise with the /sigma.

Anyway, thanks again—best wishes to you and your loved ones for the holiday period.

Craig Eliason

To you and yours too!

Christian Thalmann

The /g/ is better now, but I feel it could still profit from going a bit more in that direction. At first glance, the tail loop and the eye are still a bit closer together than I would expect.

The new counters of /P/R/ look droopy to me, like the former /a/. Maybe either cheat and make the junction in the middle light even if it should widen by pen logic, or stop the stroke before it thickens again, making a little gap?

The /four.osf/ is too much IMHO. I prefer the more open form for /five.osf/, and would suggest applying the same logic to /five/. (The Garamond /five.osf/ is actually so open that it completely avoids horizontals...)

The Greek strikes me as a bit mechanistic at times, especially in /kappa/ and /tau/, which are too rectangular and too monolinear. I know these are hard to pull off in a contrasted typeface... you'll have to accept a little touch of weirdness there. Maybe not as much as in my Overbold, but you get the idea.

Christian Thalmann

The /Germandbls/ is a very respectable contender, but still a bit unbalanced. It would work in other, similar typefaces, but the imbalance of the two counters is too large compared to the rest of your typeface (e.g., /B/, /E/, /R/). I would make the hard diagonal a bit steeper and extend the roof a bit more to the right to achieve that. Don't be afraid to cheat on the thin diagonal if it doesn't quite match your «official» pen angle. Width looks good overall.

Steve Gardner

Hi @Christian Thalmann, thanks and Happy Holidays to you and yours!

I haven't gone back to the numerals yet, but have made a number of changes, including redrawing the /alpha and modifying the /pi, /tau, (maybe not as radically as you envisaged) /sigma, /g, /Germanbdls, /P & /R.

I've tried to mitigate the droopy bowls of the /P and /R by moving the pinch point up.  Work better?

Christian Thalmann

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Thanks, likewise!

The droop is certainly gone. I had a very rectangular impression of those new counters at first sight, but they look fine on closer inspection. It might still be worth raising the pinch point even further just to see what happens. Maybe with horizontal bowl bottoms near the joint?

K Pease

Browsing the samples makes me think /space could stand to be a touch bigger.

Steve Gardner

Some updates.  Minor tweaks to a number of Greek letters and the addition of small caps.

Steve Gardner

First pass at addressing the issues with the italic.  No numerals yet, and limited punctuation/symbols, etc.

Any glaring problems?

Craig Eliason

/space is too wide. 
/c may be a touch too wide. /r arm could go a touch higher.

Steve Gardner

Thanks @Craig Eliason.  I adjusted the space and /c, and tweaked the stroke thickness at the junctions of the /h, /n and /m to match the /p.

I've also been experimenting with an alternative form for the /r.

Christian Thalmann

The connector between the bowls of /g/ appears to be the only stroke of that thinness in the entire lc. Perhaps have it taper upwards from a wider base?

The /Germandbls/ looks better, but might still profit from some more tweaking:

• I'd keep the contrast around the central corner join a bit more unambiguous, i.e., keep the heavy lower stroke from thinning as it approaches the join.
  
• Try moving both the central corner and the bowl's end at the bottom 20 units or so to the right, opening up both the counter and the aperture and relaxing the zigzag a bit. If that looks better, maybe even repeat it until you find the optimum.
  

Steve Gardner

Thanks @Christian Thalmann.

The thin stroke in the /g is broadly consistent with the width of the pinch points in other letters (see /n, /o, /d, etc).  In fact, the connector's form and position were determined by extending the connection from the ear (see image top line) and making it ever so slightly wider as it progresses down.

That said, the second line shows the original /g together with one with a wider connector and one with a tapered connector.  Are either of the new ones an improvement?

I've also experimented with the /Germandbls as suggested.  The original is line 1 for comparison.  I've thickened the stroke near the joint for both lines 2 and 3; and the joint and bowl's terminal have been pushed 20 units (line 2) and 40 units (line 3) to the right. 

Which do you think works best, or do you think I need to push even further to the right?

Christian Thalmann

Yes, the width of that neck is consistent with the pinch points, but pinch points are points and this is an entire stroke. That's why it sticks out visually. The /g/ to the far right is a big improvement imho. You could even flare the neck a tiny bit more to make it more consistent with the ear's flaring. (But it might be preferable to keep it as it is now so as not to dilute the contrast with the heavy tail stroke too much.) (And maybe the join between neck and tail could still be lowered by 10–20 units to balance out the counters even more.)

The change in the /Germandbls/ is very subtle, but goes in the right direction. I suggest trying out one or two or three more steps... until you've clearly gone too far. Take care not to widen the thin diagonal too much as its angle steepens.

Steve Gardner

Latest roman and italic versions.

Lots of minor tweaks and expansion of italic set.  Main changes include adjusting the /Germandbls (along the lines suggested by @Christian Thalmann)  and a new form for the /G

Christian Thalmann

I like the new /Germandbls/. I might add 10 units or so to the right sidebearing (it always needs a surprising amount of space) and leave it at that.

The new /G/, though, is a step back imho. The clean spurless /G/ is a great match for the inscription-like flavor of the typeface, and the newly introduced spur snags the eye, with no comparable feature to be found elsewhere in the capitals. Maybe keep the new /G/ as an alternate?

Christian Thalmann

↑ What's up with the spurious spaces that get inserted into my copy?

Steve Gardner

@Christian Thalmann, seems ok to me (see screenshot below).

As for the /G, I thought it went better with the /J.  I had the old /G as an alt; I'll switch them back.

AbiRasheed

 Hey @Christian Thalmann  what tyepface is the above from?  Nevermind I see you already mentioned its from yours called Overbold.  thanks.

Christian Thalmann

Steve, that's just my opinion, don't let me talk you into things...

As for formatting — strange, it looks like this for me:

Craig Eliason

I wonder if, in both regular and italic, the curved capitals feel too contrasty compared to straight-stroke letters. In /O for example, do the thicks get a bit too thick, and are those pinch points too delicate? Or likewise, in "SHALL" the "HALL" looks lighter and more monoline.