I began designing this typeface (my first) last November, and would really like to get some critiques by people who are more experienced. My only type education is
Designing Type by Karen Cheng, which I began reading last November, and otherwise I’m only familiar with typography from Bringhurst and general online reading. So please by all means tear it apart.
Concept:
For a while I’ve been trying out various typefaces for one that would match the landscape and community I am in. This area began to be developed towards the beginning of the last century, near a lake in the mountains where sailing, swimming, etc., are popular. I came across Bold Monday’s Trio Grotesk which seemed to match perfectly, but it was too eccentric and too wide (doesn’t fit with the many tall trees in this area as well as the significant human presence).
So I began designing this font with these traits in mind: civilized but used to the outdoors; reminiscent of monospace typewriter fonts to recall the roots and simplicity of the community (some of the printed materials in this area were typeset with typewriters).
Its intended use is print, ideally both display and body text, but at the moment it displays poorly at small sizes (see page 4 of PDF) so unless I can fix that it may only be suited to display usage.
It is obviously a work in progress, but I thought it would be better to get feedback now rather than later. Your thoughts?
Comments
/u is too wide (and maybe /v too narrow)
/1 could use some overshooting (upwards)
/G would probably look nicer if its north-east end bent a little less (or you could try moving the top extreme to the left)
bottom half of /3 looks too small (try pulling the bottom end to the left, leaving the top end at the same place)
@Christian Thalmann Thanks for the point about loose lowercase spacing causing trouble at small sizes. I’ll try tightening it. Though, when I said that it displays poorly at small sizes, I was referring to /a /e and /s being too dark or dense. Did you notice that as well? It could just be that my printer does not have good quality, but I don’t think so.
You may be right, though I have not done it intentionally. In this case, should that be something I should watch out for, e.g., does it create poor readability? In the diagonal portions of round strokes, I have only adjusted them to look optically pleasing to me.
@Ori Ben-Dor
Currently /u is just an inverted /n so the problem might be that /n is too wide (I’ll check). But /v definitely needs to be wider. Thanks for pointing that out.
My two cents:
Proportions:
Uppercase letters would need more attention since many of the letters look quite narrow, taking the lowercase letters as reference*. It could a good idea to include a block of text set in all caps so you can assess it properly. Another nice test is setting all cap letters in sentence case words (for instance, city or country names) so you can check the relationship between UC and LC letters.
*/A/C/D/G/H/L/O/T/V and /W/Z seem wide
Overall, LC proportions look good to me, but I noticed that the /n is wide compared to the /o. Try to look at the white space inside the letters and you'll notice that it could be more balanced. I'd make the /n (and similar letters) narrower since you want less generous proportions (in comparison to Trio Grotesk) . Also, /e looks quite circular, while /o is more condensed. I'd match these two too. /r is very wide and /v/y too narrow.
Other details:
-- Inverted apex of /M and corners of /Z/z do not fit to the rest of the design, I'd try to match /V/v/seven
-- Spurs of /a/g/m/n/p/q could be more refined. It looks like an automatic rounding was applied... I'd expect more tension and a smaller radius there.
-- /A/V/W: it looks quite dark where the diagonals meet. On the other hand, in and out strokes look feeble. lowercase /v looks more confident in this regard.
-- /P bowl looks small, I'd make it bigger (y-direction only)
-- /G I'd make the mid bar lower and longer.
-- /Y: Top part looks small to me.
-- /j: hook looks a bit heavy perhaps.
To everyone, I have tried applying your suggestions, and attached is the updated proof. Still rough around the edges, but better maybe.
Rafael, you might notice that I didn’t follow your suggestion to reduce the width of the /r. My reasoning behind that is to keep the character widths somewhat similar to each other to recall a monospaced typewriter font. Though obviously, the /P, /I, /j, /l and a few others are significantly narrower than the rest, but increasing their widths didn’t seem to look nice, while I like the /r in its wide form. However, I know that sometimes one likes something merely because one has been seeing it for a while, so if the /r still sticks out to you in this latest proof, please let me know, for I’ll look at it again.
About the vertical proportions: I like how the ascenders are long. However the "g", "j" and "y" are going to very different depths; I would use that of the "g" for all of them. Now, if you're actually going for variable lengths for the extenders, that's a pretty brave move, but should probably apply to all of them (I mean even the straight ones).
BTW your overshoot amounts are inconsistent (and missing in the "f" and "g"). The overshoot might also be a bit too modest, which makes this design more suitable for larger sizes; for smaller sizes more overshoot would help.
Lastly, I would make the tittles more prominent (especially considering your tall ascenders) and that huge beak on the "r" will give you a lot of spacing trouble...
Is your sample letterspaced? If so, that makes it hard to judge anything else about spacing. A sample of words would also be handy.
I'd say the /r stands out even considering your design decision. Maybe it could afford to be narrower yet keeping the original idea. But it'd make sense to apply the same feature to other narrow letters, such /f/t/j and possibly /i (adding a short horizontal stroke on the top left side).
The relationship between /n/o is still unbalanced imo... The counter of the /n has more white. Set 'nonono' or 'monopollino' at a large size on your screen to double check that.
On the caps, horizontal strokes look heavy, are you using the same width of the vertical strokes?
Jasper:
Hrant:
Thomas:
I’ve adjusted the sidebearings again and added sample words to the proof. I reduced the /j right sidebearing slightly, but since the book I have says it should be the same as the left (which is supposed to be same as the /n), I’m wondering if it’s only a problem in the unrealistic alphabetical sequence it appears in. So let me know if you still think there’s too much on the right in the word setting on page 5.
Rafael:
P.S., Rafael and Hrant, you were right again: the /r looks better with a shorter beak. I like the /f/t/j and /i as they are, so hopefully this narrower /r fits in with them. It might need to be reduced further, but I have to look at it for some more time.
(At the smallest sizes that spaciousness works better.)
Your wordspace is too wide too.
Now that everything has been tightened, /ff and /ft need ligatures, but spacing needs to be finished before those can be made, so please ignore those little bits of unsightliness...
o looks to have more space on the right than the left?
VW is spaced more tightly than vw (and their friends)
I have no problem with overall looser spacing, btw. Just looking for consistency.
I’ll keep working on this. In any case, I think I’ve asked of all of you all that can properly be asked, so the rest of the work I must do myself little by little.
Thank you very much everyone for helping me into the right direction. I will see how this goes.
Stephen
Regarding weights and italics, I think it would be nice to have at least a bold weight and an italic, but it depends on if this font proves useful to more people than myself, which was my hope in making it, and also because the one project I have in mind to use this for only needs the regular weight. So I’m thinking of putting this single weight up for sale somewhere and/or just seeing what general interest there is it, and if there’s some interest then I might try adding other weights and styles.
Thanks for spotting the incorrect inverted question mark. And yes, that 2 also needs work... Since posting the above proof I’ve already been working at it, but your comment is helpful since it’s still in progress. I’ll take a closer look at the 7 too.