Hello everybody,
As non Latin type designer I was wondering where to start to Design Latin type
face. When I found Hrant Papazian
Module + similarities it was a lot of time saver . I have made an extension to
Hrant’s Module + Similarities called
Aleme’s tree.
I think it will
be helpful to have this kind of tree for all scripts .
John Hudson whom I respect a lot who Designed (Nyala Ethiopic ) among many type
faces ,has this to say in one of his presentation .
“The first things are those that all type designers must know: the way in which
shapes relate to one another; how their relative proportions and spacing
contribute to the visual rhythm of text; how their weight, height and stroke
modulation need to vary so that, optically, they appear balanced and aligned. “
What do you think ? What can be added or subtracted?
Thanks
in advance, Aleme
Comments
As an aside: It is the rule on TypeDrawers to have one’s username be constituted of one’s complete first *and* last name; thanks.
Aleme Tadesse
(And thanks for the name: If you could edit your username accordingly that would be great. Thanks!)
The other problem with such schemas is that as soon as you have declared that a specific set of letters all share a particular feature or characteristic, I can come up with a design in which that is not the case.
_____
PS. Aleme, really nice to see you here.
Humans being visual creatures, diagrams generally help more than lists, but only if the intent warrants it. Unlike your tree, my original Modules+Similars diagram isn't about a progression; it tries to statically map two kinds of relationships (neither one of which can be effectively represented by a list) with the intent of helping people balance belonging versus divergence. In that way it's more in line with what Nina is thinking.
That said a progression/tree is also worth pursuing, since it can be useful as well, just in a different way: helping people implement an efficient order of making their glyphs, especially in a script they don't have a native grasp of. In a relatively straight-forward writing system like Latin that might only save a little bit of time however; although I guess it can still bestow a certain confidence.
But there is a danger, that Simon alluded to:
Formulaïc design (for example leveraging the conventional broad-nib pen ductal "logic") gets to a marketable product faster, but makes you blind to the unexplored. Basically, blind to a big chunk of culture. Now, some people still manage to go exploring, but many get stuck in a comfortable rut and never recover.
A related point: no diagram is gospel. Just because you could –fruitfully– deviate from it doesn't make it useless.
Ray's point concerning linguistic frequencies is also important.
--
BTW this is my first post to TypeDrawers. So Aleme, it's your fault. :-P
http://typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/19829/#Comment_19829
For example:
In the Devanagari version of the Testing Page, under the "Groups" tab, you can see some of the "groups by criteria":
1) By Graphical Similarities
2) By Position of the vertical bar
3) By Root and derived letter
4) By Knots and Loops
Similar criteria groups can be made for Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, etc..