Critique my WIP Gayot-inspired display face (also, hello from a new member)

Brian Dove

Hello TypeDrawers! 

Long term lurker, new member. My name is Brian Dove, I am a multidisciplinary designer in West Virginia running a design studio called Big Fog with my partner, Valerie Burgess. I came to type design through branding and logotypes, took Lynne Yun's online course in late 2020, and have been slowly teaching myself and practicing type design for the last couple years. I haven't published any type yet, but have something (not this) set to come out through Blaze Type's The Box imprint later this year or early next, and plan to publish my retail typefaces through Big Fog as well. 

I'd love some feedback on a WIP display face I've been chipping away at for a while. While I hesitate to call it a revival at this point (feel free to correct me if you think otherwise), it is heavily inspired by 1970's Mecanorma contest winner Gayot. The original typeface was lowercase only, had much narrower proportions, and wider spacing. Intended size is obviously display, best suited to short words or phrases

Any feedback is welcome, but I'm especially struggling with how to balance the texture here with the teeny tiny circular counters in some letters, and deeper cut-in negative space in others. I don't want to enlarge the circular counters too much further, as I think that little is part of the charm. Perhaps spacing changes and some other subtle tweaks can help balance the overall color without straying too far from the source material?

Enjoy the Star Trek themed preview in both JPG and PDF format below. Excited to join this vibrant community, thanks for taking a look!

Andreas Stötzner

I would consider

– to lend descenders to p, q, j, etcª (not sure about this),

– to lower the hight of t,

– to round the inner corners of T,

– to give the upper part of V straight vertical outer contours,

– to switch the counter of P a little bit to the right.

I would most likely make all the round ‘pearl’ counters of the same size.

The texture is a nightmare in the first place, but it constitutes a great share of the face’s charme, just the way it is.

Apart from all that: awesome lovely and well executed.

Thomas Phinney

I would second Andreas’ third through last comments—although I disagree with the first one, and have some uncertainty on the second.

Very fun! And yes the wacky texture and such is part of the charm.

Craig Eliason

“Round” forms could be rounder, that is, you might shorten the straight segments in many of the curved strokes. That also might help smooth the straight-to-curved transitions.
Maybe H and K should be fat in the middle?

Claudio Piccinini

If your goal is not to be closely faithful to Gayot (except the new uppercases), I would consider both to differentiate more from the source, and to differentiate between /c and /e.

Brian Dove

Thanks for the suggestions, y'all! Will take all of this into consideration and share some progress here soon. 

And @Andreas Stötzner good catch re: counter size...they were definitely meant to be the same size but something went awry along the way (I think some are a reused Glyphs component, and a few got outlined in haste)

Appreciate it, everyone!

Ben Noe

I'm very late to this party, but just gotta say that I love this!

Brian Dove

Thanks Ben! And thanks everyone for the suggestions. As always, there is room for improvement, and there are things I plan to refine and add in future versions, but your feedback helped get this to a good starting point!

Version 1.0 was released via my studio Big Fog in November, and is free until January 16. You can check it out and grab a free license here.