Optical compensations and writing tools

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  • Ben Blom
    Ben Blom Posts: 250
    edited March 2018
    Jasper de Waard: I am interested in the cause of this bias. Why would our visual system be set up in such a way that the A’s left line appears thicker than its right line (if they are metrically equal)?

    This Why-question is asking for a kind of “nature nurture discussion”, which is out of the scope of this forum. It’s like asking “Why does the sun exist”, when discussing solar power technology. What- or How-questions—like “What kind of bias is it exactly?” or “How can we compensate (if we would want that) for this bias when designing a specific glyph?”—are within the scope of this forum.

  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,460
    edited March 2018
    When you have letters like M and W, which have so many strokes and joins to complete in a small space, the difficulty for me is just to overcome the business and darkness compared to the other letters. Following a pure stroke model becomes difficult with heavy weights.  I feel it is necessary to tinker with these letters more than any other. For me, drawing an S is a piece of cake compared to a W.  The attempt at true monoline heavy W is the most strife filled.  Contrasty versions are much easier.
  • PabloImpallari
    PabloImpallari Posts: 824
    IIRC, calligraphers also turns the pen a bit for optical compensation. I guess it was in one of Sheila Waters books (or something similar) that they, for example, turn the pen a little more when doing the uppercase /N diagonal and in other situations.
    G. Bickham not only turned the pen but also used only a portion of the writing surface when doing some exit strokes. Will try to find the exact reference later.

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