A slab serif inspired by Selectric Pyramid, Landi Corsivo and others

marcomastri

Hello everyone,

I feel a little guilty asking for feedback after being a lurker here for years, but I’ve never felt I had much to add to the discussions. That said, this forum has been an invaluable learning resource for me, and now I’m hoping to get some help with a thing I’ve been working on. While it’s not the first typeface I’ve started, it’s the first time I feel it’s starting to getting somewhat decent.

Some time ago, browsing fontsinuse i “discovered” the Pyramid typeface for the Selectric typewriter. Intrigued by its compact proportions, I started re-drawing it as an exercise, aiming at first to stay more or less faithful to the original. The Pyramid typeface looks like a compressed version of Stephenson & Blake’s Scarab, redesigned to follow the 9-unit grid of the IBM Selectric typewriter. I’m really really grateful for @John Savard’s webpage on typewriters units, by the way, which I used to set up a grid in Glyphs.

Re-drawing Pyramid was fun, but the wonky spacing and proportions of some letters don’t really hold up: I’d like this typeface to be a pleasing reading experience at least on magazine length texts. At this point I still feel more comfortable working on a grid, so in order to get a more uniform texture I subdivided it to 18 units (Monotype!), and then again to 36 for a couple of letters. I also rounded the joints in the shoulders of m/n/h, the bowls of b/d/p/q, the vertical serifs in s/c/S/C/G, and opted for a two-storey g, which I like better for longer texts.

Then, I started a really rough draft for the italic. I started with a simple slanted version of the upright, only with one-storey a/g. Later, inspired by Landi Corsivo, I tried rounded end strokes. I feel that this second version is more interesting and offers better emphasis in texts, but I’m a bit worried it could be a bit overdone.

As for feedback, I’m mainly looking for thoughts on two areas:

• How does the overall quality of the roman design hold up at the moment? Are there any specific areas that need to be improved?
• Which version of the italic should I keep to work on? The rounded version seems better for emphasis in text, but could certain glyphs result too distracting? I’m especially worried about the y: I really like it, but obviously v/w and maybe x/z should harmonize with it, and it could be a bit too frilly?

Thank you all for your thoughts!
Marco

PDF attached below:

Paul Hanslow

Then, I started a really rough draft for the italic. I started with a simple slanted version of the upright, only with one-storey a/g. Later, inspired by Landi Corsivo, I tried rounded end strokes. I feel that this second version is more interesting and offers better emphasis in texts, but I’m a bit worried it could be a bit overdone.

IMO it's better to overdo it and bring it back into line, than keep things unexplored and neutral. Personally, I prefer your second italic as it creates a clearer visual distinction from the roman. 

marcomastri

IMO it's better to overdo it and bring it back into line, than keep things unexplored and neutral.

Thank you, that's a very good point.

Mikhail Vasilev

marcomastri said:

... I’d like this typeface to be a pleasing reading experience at least on magazine length texts. ... I also rounded the joints in the shoulders of m/n/h, the bowls of b/d/p/q, the vertical serifs in s/c/S/C/G, and opted for a two-storey g, which I like better for longer texts.

In my opinion, rounding the bowls of p/b/d/d  creates rather negative effect in general, especially p's bottom is notably  unbalanced. 

Also I don't like the v. Despite it is a compact font, I don't think there is a need to make the v that much compressed, so it loses itlesf in the text. I can almost confuse it with r. 

Upscaling it seems to improve things notably:

 

Regarding italic, I like the slanted version better.