Hi all,
I'm quite new here as I've been getting more interested in type and the mix of creative and technical challenge it offers. I have a background in artworking but as for type design I'm a mere novice. Never-the-less I've given myself the challenge of designing a new typeface to accelerate my learning and understanding. If any of you have the time to take a look and offer pointers to develop further, I'd really appreciate it.
The inspiration was drawn from the hand-painted titles on the ornate framed paintings in the Palace of Versailles. The aim was to keep some of the charm of the workmanship, so many of the letters have only very minor changes to the original trace from my reference photos. I also had Didot in mind as a guide. It is intended as a display font - perhaps in magazine or retail applications if I had to imagine a use for it.
If you have the time, the PDF has more glyphs and the font in words/pangrams. Spacing is pretty rough at the moment, while I focus on the drawing.
Many thanks,
Dwayne
Comments
The g seems wide, which might be fine if not for the perfectly matching widths on nhm,bdpq. To harmonize with the capitals, they lowercase widths need a touch of strangeness. Consider a more conventional bqt.
Also: spacing.
I've increased overshoots on this version and done some initial work on the spacing throughout.
I've not redrawn the g, only because of time but I'll work on this next. Also conventional p,q,t - but might offer them as alternate glyphs - is that a sound plan?
Thanks again
fgjty have shaping problems that you can't determine until you work out the spacing. You never know what a g should look like until you see it followed by a y... or another g. You don't know what a t should look like until you see it next to an f. Once you test with words, the ideal shapes will be obvious.
Another key in balanced type design is getting to see the white as clearly as the black. Look at C next to D, or c next to d. Can you see how the C and c capture so much more white space? Consequentially the D and d look too narrow by comparison. Much of perfecting a typeface design is adjusting letter widths to obtain balance of blacks and whites. To keep yourself from going crazy, establish "control characters"--many including me use n and o for lowercase and H and O for uppercase. Make sure those pairs are balanced and well spaced, then you can surround all other letters with them and judge color and spacing.
In the lowercase, only z gets these flares.
The inside contour of the bowls of bd are a bit lopsided, not as symmetical as I would expect. Meanwhile the inside contour of pq are uneven, cut rather than smooth, and feature angled stress instead of vertical stress.