I've started working on something fun, based on some fabricated metal letters above the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, near where I live. I've always been fascinated by these letterforms — they're just so strange, like they were made by someone without a full grasp of what letters are supposed to look like, and yet I find them really charming. Some pics (note that they're somewhat different on each side of the tunnel!):
North side:
http://bridgehunter.com/photos/17/19/171979-L.jpgSouth side:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/32268723.jpgSo I started designing something that's cleaned up enough to be usable, but hopefully without losing that awkward charm. The tough thing is finding the spot where that balance is!
So far, I've made only the characters that I have references for. Wanted to get a little feedback before moving on to filling in the rest of the alphabet.
I know the /R is super weird (I mean, even more weird than the rest), but I love it. There are definitely some characters that feel darker than others — I need to figure out how much of that I want to keep (what's distracting vs what's attractively naive).
I think this has a cool 20th-century industrial confidence to it, but I have no idea whether that's appealing to anyone but me.
Comments
At the very least we need to spread the idea of a Stylistic Set that flips the contrast distribution to heavy-lefts (as Austin mentions). You heard it here first. Well, unless you follow me on Twitter. :-)
Was considering a small caps as the lowercase, if I get that far. We'll see.
I've ruined many a good ALL CAPS display typeface by adding a lowercase. Proceed with caution.
Testing out Craig's suggestions — Before:
After:
Some of the numerals are proving tough to incorporate the "heavy left/bottom" thing into—some are looking especially quirky. But fun, I think?
03C3S3B30
08S8B80
05G5C5S50
etc.
Test the numerals together and make minor adjustments so they work well together.