The extension allows drawing letters with a centerline – skeleton. The stroke is literary drawn by a nib led according to a skeleton. Letterink advantage is the ability to vary nib width and angle on the same skeleton and keep those variations while changing general nib preset for a master. Moreover, the stroke is rendered into a glyph as if it was an outline. This allows the designer to use strokes without the direct necessity to expand strokes to outlines.
Expanding to outlines generates clean vectors without messy points. Or, at least in most cases, it does so. The remaining cases are going to be fixed.
Currently, its possibility is narrowed to the simple pen simulated by abscissa. But, the results are more than promising. Watch the demonstration on the video.
The project was part of my diploma thesis to research the possibilities of the skeleton type design. I am looking for the way how to publish the outcomes – blog or a book.
The development of the Glyphs extension was managed by Martin Cetkovsky. Currently, we have released Letterink as a minimum viable version to proof the concept. Hence, In the future, we are planning to integrate more advanced shapes like triangles, rectangles, polygons or ellipses plus their combinations.
If you are working on a calligraphic project or studying typeface construction, it is worth, to give it a try. We have already received convincing feedback out of the testing non-latin typefaces especially Arabic, Hangul and Devanagari.
We are looking forward the skeletons outcomes and your feedback.
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