So I've had this inexplicable urge to start drawing one of the most redundant fonts imaginable — a geometric display sans. In particular, I thought I'd try to make it stand out from the crowd with some creative alternates and ligatures, such as a Maestrale-style /f that reaches over the following letter. The working title is Freitag.
Given how saturated the market is for such sanses: Do you see any merit in this, or should I just cross this off my every-type-designer-has-to-go-through-this-phase list?
Warning: If not dissuaded, I might be tempted to make the /A a big version of the /a. At least in a stylistic set. ;o)
Comments
I've never added Ɑ to a typeface before, and this seems like a bad time to start.
I am looking forward to seeing more of this design.
More!
So would you consider licensing it otherwise?
Still...? Alright, I'll try some even shorter descenders and see whether I like them...
I also made a few more weird creative capitals and made sure there is a boring conventional alternate available for all of them. The lowercase-style /E is probably too much even for my taste.
There's also a smaller stylistic set that removes the spurs off of some of the letters and makes them more geometric:
Other glyphs that stand out to me are the /v and /w - feels like they should use the same 'system' and they aren't (the /v is sharp edged and the /w is round)
I can't really predict anything about market response or anything, but as long as you keep diverging from the 'standard' choices with this, I feel you are developing something nice and new here. Keep going!
As for /v and /w, yes, it would be preferable to have both in the same style. I feel like the current /w is the way to go, rather than making /w diagonal. I've avoided diagonals everywhere else so far. Problem is, if I try to adapt /v to the philosophy of /w, I end up with something that will be read as /u. Can you think of a round shape that will be read as /v?
Cheers!
At the beginning of this thread, when you wrote that you were going to tackle a "geometric display sans", I thought to myself, "Good God, why would you want to waste the time?".
Then, as your work progressed and you added the lowercase-style /A, I thought to myself... "Good God, that is just going to make it look childish".
But damn if you haven't piqued my interest. This IS looking really great and I think you are onto an interesting variation of the same old boring "geometric display sans". Keep going!
I vote for the shorter descenders.
As for that /E, well... that mirrored-/3 design is not working for me. I might just stick with the lunate-epsilon, or even use the rectilinear one for all styles. Though I gotta say I find the scaled-/e version really sexy in all-caps! Definitely will have to offer it as a stylistic alternate.
EDIT: Oh, I'm really starting to like that /E.
Interesting Craig, that you mention the "double u" - in French they say "double v"
Anyway, Christian, do whatever you feel is best. Now that Craig mentioned it I think you can let the /w resonate with either the /u or /v. (I've actually had some struggles with /u/v/w/ myself creating Abraham)
Keep it up!
fair enough, I already have a footless /U from SS01. I've added that to SS02 as well.
The lowercase-style /B doesn't work in the least, though. It doesn't have enough vertical space to read as a proper /B. Also, the other lowercase-style letters I've used so far have had some traditional precedent in script and blackletter, as far as I can tell. This /B doesn't profit from that familiarity. Finally, I find the current default caps' lack of ascenders rather attractive.
Maybe use even shorter ascenders and descenders for these capitals? I also like Christian's idea above, something like that might work too. Or, maybe the ascender on something like your /B needs to be the capital height, and the bowl could be lower than that (not sure if that would work though, especially since the /P and /Q have bowls of same height as the /O)
Somehow the /G stands out to me, as does the /Y (although I love their forms, they do very well if you see them standing alone). But in the group of capitals as they are, their descenders seem almost too long, and maybe too lengthy horizontally? In comparison with your /J for example, which has a very short descender, both vertically and horizontally. No idea if, but would that work for the /G and /Y (good chance it won't, but it might be worth a try)
And oh yes, I agree with Craig that the /U in the SS02 caps doesn't need the foot.
Jan: I sort of see what you mean, but it doesn't bother me much. I'm aiming for a unicase feel, after all, not a lowercase feel per se. Some LC letters just don't work as UC. At least with the current layout, the /B and /D keep the /R company.
As for descenders: I don't think I can make the UC descenders even lower; the /G's tail is already very tight, and I don't want to make its bowl visibly smaller than the /A. Actually, I rather like it the way it is. (I did shorten the descender of the /Þ, though, since it was higher than the ascender, which looked weird.) I have a feeling that I would viscerally dislike shortening those descenders horizontally; it's why I can't stand Interstate.
The numbers, /@ and ampersand are great looking by the way, and that new /s also looks really good. The only one standing out is the /1 right now, but I see what you did there and am guessing why. So that makes sense.
I'm starting to dislike that default /W. Maybe I'll adopt the /W.ss02 as the default, and stick the current /W into .ss01 along with the other spurless arches?
Not sure about your curvy /W. It does resonate nicely with /U /X and /K so there's that. I'm not to keen on the 'angular' /W (SS02) - reminds me too much of the (old new) NASA logo somehow (even though on looking that up, it doesn't even match).
Just for reference, I meant this (ouch!)