Hi everyone,
I'm working on some lettering for a client, and would be much obliged to receive some critique.
Quick introduction, as I'm new here: I'm Duncan, I live in Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada. I worked many (teenage) years as a printer's devil, now a letterpress printer and a graphic designer, but have no formal training, have never designed a typeface, and am pretty new to custom lettering. I'm working on training my eye by staring at specimens, watching tutorials, practicing and looking through forums (happy to have found this one!).
Some brief background on the name:
In 19th century St. John's, Newfoundland, wooden-hulled, steam-powered schooners filled the harbour, and were known as "wooden walls". To design the lettering for the client, I looked to roundhand, because the contrast, pen feel and wave-like flourishing seemed to embody the feeling of being at sea.
Welcoming any and all feedback! In particular I've been unsure about the size of the /W, the terminals in the /W, the form of the /s, the form of the upstrokes, how the /n plays into the composition, and the weight placement in the flourishes, and basically everything else.
Thank you.
Duncan
Comments
I also think there's a clash between the main parts of the letters which are very regularized and typographic, and the swashy bits which have an incongruous (and a bit ungraceful) looseness to them. Feels like a font with tacked-on swashes rather than a unified piece of calligraphy. The identical /W/s, /o/s, and /l/s read as inorganic.
It could also be slightly curved.
By the way, I think the upstroke connecting the s strikes as too thin (compared to the thinnest in 'd', for instance).
@AbiRasheed I'm also unsure of what you mean about the first diagonal stem on the W, but have attempted to make it feel less like it's tipping to the right. I've tried to incorporate your feedback on the /s and /n as well as the swash on the W.
@Craig Eliason - while editing, I keep thinking about your comment about the clash between the regularized/typographic letters and the swashy ones, and the identical repeats. I tried introducing minute differences in the letters, but it looked like a mistake to me. Do you still find it to be problematic?
Thanks everyone for your constructive commentary on this!
I'm a sucker for nice Latin script fonts. I would likely buy it if available.
The s is getting better! The upstroke seems inconsistent, though - wider at the base than at the top.
And what I've been meaning to address is as follows:
If you assess the slant of all letters, the 's' looks more upright (at least to my sight/liking).
The bounding boxes I drew might be somewhat exagerrated, but I hope you get my point.
One problem is that if you try to slant the 's' more, the gap between it and the 'l' will grow too wide... So maybe I've been wrong all along and the 's' is just as slanted as it should.
On second thoughts, the connection between 'd' and 'e' bugs me. I'd make it smooth (by shifting the 'e' right). But then again, it would make the overall spacing less consistent, so I'd have to loosen it altogether. (Which, well, might make it possible to slant the 's' a tad more).
The client for this project has decided to abandon this route – they noticed an established competitor was using a classic roundhand (font) and felt it was too similar.
Maybe I'll change it to Wooden Whales and keep going? Haha
Thanks again.