Looking for advice on improving my eye

aaronkneile

[Disclaimer 1: My first post here. Please correct me if I'm posting in the wrong place.]
[Disclaimer 2: I know this is something that naturally happens over time. I’m hoping for pointers to help on the journey]
---
My goal with this is to create a Grotesk font that takes inspiration from 19th Century display type. I want to avoid the kind of smoothed-over perfection found in 20th century neo-grotesks. But while I gravitate towards the imperfections and irregularity that give a font character and make it feel hand-tooled, I still want it to feel harmonious and functional in today’s world.

My challenge is in how to make a font with highly contrasting stem widths into something with consistent tone and rhythm. Nothing should seem too large or small, nothing too heavy or light. If I had a better trained eye, I could probably spot where it’s out of balance, but I’m relatively new to this. 

I’m not asking for a complete course on this - but I’m wondering if anyone has any practical approaches to how you look at a font and how to hone your eye. How does your eye move, and what are you looking for? Is there a guiding philosophy?

As an example: studying fine art I had a teacher share a technique for quickly flipping your gaze back and forth from the subject to your canvas -- over and over. Once I learned how to look at it this way, I’d see what was different or not correctly proportioned. Eye training. 

Anyway, when I print these out, they’re just not working. Here are a few letters to show the challenge:


And here it is with measuring balls to show the extent of the contrast:


Many thanks!

Jasper de Waard

It's hard to say what is 'just not working' when imperfections are your goal. I actually think this could be a decent starting point for something quirky, but it's hard to pinpoint the direction without more glyphs. Looking at the glyphs you've shown, you could categorise your strokes broadly into 3 categories:
- Thick: verticals and north-western diagonals
- Medium: horizontals and north-eastern diagonals
- Thin: space saving areas like the middle bar of E and A.

I would suggest to place the north-eastern diagonal in M into the thin category, and the left-most stem into the medium category. The bar in H you could place into the medium category, or keep it as is for a more quirky look. In the latter case you'd be going for something more experimental for display purposes, and you could also consider e.g. putting both diagonals of the M into the thin category.

Training your eye, like you've suggested, comes with experience. When I'm checking for color, I think I sometimes subconsciously focus on a point that is either further in the distance or closer to me than the actual display/paper I'm looking at, but I don't think about this. Don't move your eyes too much, but try zooming in and out mentally. You can also try squinting your eyes, although I rarely do that myself. Flipping all text, or just looking at your printout upside-down can help to disassociate the shapes from the letters/words they represent.

Consider skipping the inktraps for now, they may be more of a distraction than a tool in this stage. If you keep them, also add an inktrap to the Y.

 

aaronkneile

Jasper - thank you for your kind reply! Flipping the text backwards or upside down seems like a great solution for evaluation.   

Drawcard

Hi there, so my personal opinion is that your sample reflects the sort of thing you're striving for - I am getting a sense of that "hand tooled" quality, in that the contrast varies in subtle ways and it doesn't feel mathematically precise.

That said, I think you could add some slight overshoot to /O so this doesn't recede in perceived height to other characters: https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/overshoot

Also I would suggest reading up about typographic colour as that will help you achieve a general "evenness" with your font's appearance: https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/color & test your font for colour & rhythm here: https://www.impallari.com/testing/tools.php (click "Color Grid" to generate a test pattern)

Getting a copy of Karen Cheng's "Designing Type" will also help you train your eye by studying other fonts and seeing how they are built.

I think you're heading in the right direction with what you want to achieve & I wouldn't get too hung up on the maths being correct with your stem weights. It's totally fine to adjust to what your eye thinks is best.

Good luck & keep us posted!

Jens Kutilek

Pay attention to the counter shapes (white shapes inside the letters). They should also be visually equalized between the letters. In this regard, the counter shapes of the M look much smaller than those of the other letters.

Igor Petrovic

Looks nice and fresh, you have good taste. This is a conceptually advanced project, because — as Jasper categorized — your logic of thin and thick is different from genre classics.

My advice is to work in iterations and embrace the font versioning as a production model. No matter how close you inspect the typeface you can't see all at first.

I might be wrong, but to me, H, M, and E look wider than A, Y, and O. Maybe you intentionally want that uneven rhythm though.