Nemo Italic

Sabina Kipara

Hello everyone!

This is my first attempt of designing an italic semi-serif display typeface. The thing with this italic is that is has to part from a roman earlier designed by my work colleagues. You will see attached the roman version and the italic as well. The roman is an experiment inspired by Filosofia type. You will notice that it lacks a certain coherent construction system. With this in mind I tried to maintain the semi-serif characteristic, and also the original idea to have less weight on the base of the letters. Also, I want my result not to appear so similar with the Filosofia type.

I noticed that some characters are more cursive than others that seem to be more oblique. I have a big dilema with the small z, where I tried to compensate the lack of weight with a longer tail. But it becomes too swirly. Characters like v and w seem more thiner than the rest. The V and W look pretty weird, and tend to fall on the right side.

If the regular A has bottom serifs can the italic A change intro a upward one? If the regular base endings are straight, can they be a little rounded an oblique in the italic?

The font lacks kerning and punctuation.

It would be really great to have your feedback! Any comments and suggestions are much appreciated.

Thank you!

Mike Duggan

hi , I cant open the pdf. might be a reason nobody replied?

George Thomas

I just tried them and they open fine.

Quick comment about the italic: word spacing is at least twice as wide as it should be; roman spacing is much better.

Max Phillips

Mike, try mousing over the icons and clicking the file names, rather than clicking the icons.

Sabina, try taking another look at the junctures, where the arches join the main stem on the lower case. Some look a bit dark and clogged, and may need a bit of thinning.

The top bar of the z is pretty heavy, and the 'tail' is very long; it looks out of balance, and will collide w/ other letters. And the diagonal spine may need to curve more, like the spine of the s, but reversed.

Giving all vertical strokes the same italic angle will run you into trouble. For instance, the right-hand strokes of h, m, and n need to lean a bit further forward than the straight stems on the left. Otherwise they'll look like they're leaning further backward. Same goes, in reverse, for letters like u. In general, slant letters and strokes by eye; making them mechanically consistent in a face like this won't work.

But before you do anything else to the itals, tighten the spacing up as George says. And try setting paragraphs of actual text, rather than test strings. It makes it much easier to see where things look wonky.

Good luck!

Craig Eliason

The semi-serif idea has potential in the italic but seems arbitrary and off-putting in the roman, to my eye.
You might try swapping the serif treatments at the top and bottom of /S/.

Alexis Luengas

With a grain of salt (or a few more): When you try to introduce unconventional elements to a typeface design, you also take the risk of breaking the consistency within this design. Diversity implies heterogeneity. Ending the top of /S/ with a ball terminal is renouncing to the sturdiness of the uppercase. Appart from the terminal of /J/, there is no echo of that characteristic in the uppercase. This makes the /S/ look arbitrary and weakens the design as a whole. (And /S/ is just the most obvious example.) I think it is even more important to enhance overall consistency if you are already breaking the consistency within glyphs (e.g. terminals of /H/, /E/, etc.). For instance, /N/ and /U/, and /v/ and /y/ follow a different logic.

A few other remarks:

• The terminal of /J/ is too close to the stem or too curled.
• It would be good to make the bottom terminal of /S/ like in /C/.
• The ear of /g/ is too short.
• The bulging at the bottom of /Z/ looks weird to me.

Keep it up! ;-)

Mike Duggan

thanks. I wasn't signed in, so couldn't open. they open fine now. good to see that at least it got some comments going

Sabina Kipara

Thank you so much for all the advices! I will start by adjusting the spacing, after that I will try to improve each letter according to your suggestions. Hopefully by the end of next week I will have a new version.