I’m trying to finish off an old project that I’ve been sporadically chipping away at for a while now. It’s a pretty simple geometric sans (sorry) that’s very much indebted to Johnston.
I’d like to think that I’m not too far off completing it: everything that I plan to include is drawn, and the metrics are all pretty much done.
As well as all general refinements needing done, a few specific issues that are on my to-do list:
• Can’t settle on /G design; can’t get the heavy master looking good
• Diacritics weak/boring? Too light in heavy master?
• /5 is ugly
• /2 and /2.osf are ugly
• Aperatures of /e /g /y.ss01 /5 are too tight in heavy master – but reluctant to stray too far from design of lighter weights
• /æ and /œ are too dark
Feedback on any aspect would be most welcome – thank you in advance.
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I’ve attached a PDF with glyph charts for each of the masters – and a PDF with texts generated for all the languages available on the very useful JAF test text generation (http://justanotherfoundry.com/generator). If the text samples say anything offensive then blame Tim Ahrens; if there’s something witty in there then I take full credit.
Comments
Cedillas look placed too far to the right for my palate. Not a native reader, though. But the vertical joiners placed at the centre make the whole diacritic weigh on the right.
The capitals are amiable! I only find the crotch og the /M a little uneasy.
Neither S works, and they’re too different. The uppercase is too bottom heavy, the lowercase is leaning right.
The upper portion of 4 is small; it looks like someone chopped the top off.
The 8 needs optical compensation. Right now it looks like a gorilla.
Q looks like a refugee from a humanist sans.
@James Puckett: for the uppercase /S I kinda wanted something slightly awkward and top heavy, à la Futura, but I struggled to make the design translate to the lowercase – agree they need work.
With the /4, are you saying that you expect it to look more like the version on the right? I definitely prefer the shorter vertical stem.
I'll take another look at that /8, try putting him on a diet.
I cycled through a few different designs for /Q, but I settled on that one a while ago. I suppose I've been looking at it for too long to see it as an anomaly, but if the design sticks out to you then it's worth me considering other directions.
Bringing the crossbar on the 4 a tiny little down instead of protruding the stem might help while preserving the spirit.
Lining /two leans left.