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Good words for sketching letters
James Puckett
Posts: 1,933
Aside from the old standards—handgloves, hamburgefonts, and adhesion—what words are good for sketching letters? I find that Magenta and Magneto work well.
1
Comments
For no good reason, I used "fringed chasuble" when designing Spinoza. 11 years of "fringed chasuble". I don't recommend it.
I don’t generally use full words for sketching, per se; but my preferred string for comparing & evaluating progress is Hamburgefontsplivdy.
Once, when I was seeking more real-world alternatives, two that I liked and seemed to be useful were Pantographic and vulgar hedonist. (Mostly because I tend to leave f’s for later. ;-)
It's available.
I thought you meant sketch as in loose/preliminary rendering.
Hu?
If this is just for lettering fun that that's one thing but from the point of view of getting started on a font "adhesion" is good but so is Type Together's phrase "videospan". The reasons are the same. "magneto" is no good - for the same reason.
The reason is that you want shapes to play with that you really want letters that are good stand ins for the overall texture and which also do a good job of suggesting what the essential characteristics or "DNA" of the type will be. You also want letters that you can make a large number of test words with. In English an "e" is particularly ideal.
You don't want to repeat shapes more than you have to because it is inefficient. Hence if you have a d you don't need a bpq etc. Similarly if you have a n you don't need an m. You also don't want letters that tell you very little about the rest of the types face such as g in the double story version. It is a cul du sac design process within the font.
The great thing about "magneto" is that it has an an and e which are superficially similar because they have middle strokes but which must be treated so differently.
I think that a go to word seems less important than having an awareness of the relative utility of the letters you choose to your design process.
shoplift
Warning: Do not sketch this word over and over at airport gates, you will be stopped for suspicious behavior.
I understand why many designers like to use words that include some of the more 'expressive' letters such as lowercase a and g, and diagonal letters. But I reckon 90% of what makes a typeface work is in its stroke weights, proportions and spacing. I want to get those established first, and worry how to make the lowercase a charming later.
In fonting my lowercase take-off is nuhm (nun, ihm, nur, minni…).
Hamburgefonstiv or Hamburghepfonsity is always at hand, as well as daumenchor/Daumenchor or Rovenbaum.
In the correction process I make use of
Endumachtoligryphe
Apfendygarboscimuth
Dampfguldenchorist
Embaroughsteplicy
Chambourgent
Chordavimentus
Drauchendiplom
Buchstabengoldy
Hengoldyframpusch
Endiquamorphyse
Alberyndephromagintu
Weihnachtsoratyrium
Zwölfte Daumenchorsymphonie
Downton Abbey Road
and similar stuff.
For viewing capitals I like e.g. ANCHORAGE, VANCOUVER, DYKUMAPHONIE, SYMPHONIEKONZERTABEND.
In order to view certain language-specific letter combinations I look at
stauchverplützlischkeitung
whoughlythecouldinguishty
beauxondèraistonagenoîtous
ghiamoglichennondiscezza
nieszczącyłytwyckiczyskiec
adameiraquenhãmosadação
questrasientechoiudadeñación
uitelijkeendischaachtjeshoud.