I've been working on this as a student project, and I'm at the point where it's looking pretty good to me, but I'm hoping someone with more experienced eyes can point out the flaws I'm missing.
I've done upper/lower/figures/punctuation and extended western European so far. Most are based on the specimen I managed to get a copy of, but I filled in a lot of missing characters myself, inspired by the various existing versions of Kabel. I haven't done any kerning yet, but the sidebearings are working reasonably well.
I'm also really curious whether anyone has even seen this design before. It's Rudolf Koch's swash capitals designed to pair with lowercase Kabel—it was never given its own name (Kabella is my name for the revival) and there seems to be very little information available about it. He really seemed to love mixing different styles of upper and lowercase. Koch was really a fascinating character (no pun intended).
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I'm also wondering if there are any characters with major problems? I've done some optical corrections, like making the vertical strokes 28 units and horizontal 26, tapering before joints, etc.
Then you love to try very hard, considering that peculiar typeface for a 1st time.
I do not wish to discourage you, but, from looking at Koch’s swash capitals just briefly, there are a lot of inherent flaws already, which do not make this an easy 1st-term task. Maybe there is a reason for that this has not been digitized before.
– Anyway, Good luck!
@Andreas Stötzner I appreciate the warning, but could you elaborate on the inherent flaws in Koch's design?
Probably my main motivation for doing this project, besides the learning experience, is that I really like Koch's work and this design in particular, and I think it's worthwhile to preserve it and make it available for anyone that may want to use it, rather than sitting in a book in a museum where few designers will ever get to see it. I'm happy to release it with any inherent flaws it might have, but anything I can fix while still preserving the character of the design, or by adding alternates, would be fantastic. I do really have an appreciation for the idiosyncrasies in Koch's designs.