Here's my most recent project, a textura blackletter typeface built from a limited inventory of straight segments and circular arcs of consistent weight, with exclusively orthonormal or diagonal cuts. I'm aiming for a "geometric sans" among blackletters.
The project was inspired by the letters
|ABCD| hand-painted by Sasha Prood in what seemed to be a geometric blackletter. I later found out he drew these letters from an existing font,
Bastard by Jonathan Barnbrook. Luckily, my own rendition of the concept had taken on a life of its own by then, and had turned out very different from Barnbrook's approach. I used Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch as my main reference for blackletter shapes.
Since some traditional blackletter letterforms can be hard to parse for modern readers — in particular the capitals —, I made more legible alternate forms for |AGHIKZ|. They can be accessed through the Stylistic Set 01 in the main font, and I intend to release a companion font in which these forms replace the default forms for easier use.
Here are some PDF specimens:
http://www.cinga.ch/type/gryffensee_specimen.pdfhttp://www.cinga.ch/type/gryffensee_alt_specimen.pdfAnd full character inventories:
http://www.cinga.ch/type/gryffensee_inventory.pdfhttp://www.cinga.ch/type/gryffensee_alt_inventory.pdfI intend to release the font soon, unless there are issues remaining that would call for a major overhaul.
Opinions?
Comments
Let me know when it's out and I spread the news.
@ Stephen: Oh, right, I must have gotten the HTML wrong. Here are the two links:
Sasha Prood's hand-lettering: http://www.sashaprood.com/art/Scroll_Portfolio_02.jpg
Bastard font: http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/virusfonts/bastard/
Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch font: http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/wilhelm-klingspor-gotisch/
The biggest change so far has been the replacement of the |s|. I have two versions of it now:
I intend to ship the more traditional Fraktur-style |s| on the left side with the default Gryffensee font, and the slimmer |s| on the right with the Gryffensee Alternate font (which also contains the more legible capitals). The slim |s| will furthermore be available in the default font as a stylistic alternate.
But at the same time it also looks more modern and less traditional... it's a hard decision...
I think I like it
Print a few paragraphs of text using each one, review, and them decide.
A few paragraphs will give you better context than isolated words.
I'm also guessing the new one will be a bit more easy to read, given the simplified construction.
The /s have a high frequency of repetition in pretty much all languages.
Changing it will also change the “feeling” of your paragraphs.
I realize that this is a modernization of a style, and i might be being a bit pedantic, but I feel like what unites the individual characters in Fraktur is less the verticality and pen angle and more the monotony and relentlessness of it.
Yes, the slim |s| looks like it's folded from paper, which is not a terrible association for this kind of font.
@ James: A blackletter stencil sounds intriguing, though I'm worried that it would fall apart — fraktur letters tend to have a rather tenuous coherence already, and it wouldn't help legibility either.
@ Pablo: Good idea, I'll try that.
@ Jack: Consistent blackness is certainly important. Actually, my original |s| always struck me as too black compared to other characters. This becomes very evident if I use the blurring function in Glyphs. The slim |s| was too light, though, as you noticed. I believe I've alleviated that problem by adding some weight to the spine, though.
I don't think I can do much about the relative lightness of |r| and |c|. I've taken care to keep Gryffensee sans-serif so far, and anyway I've always found those two letters too similar for my taste in typical blackletter renditions. I suppose this is one of the concessions I'll have to make to the "geometric sans" aspect of the font.
And move it to the left a bit in the /c to be able to have a tighter spacing.
And the same thing in fuzzy:
BTW, I love Glyphs, it's made my life very much easier!
Just an observation from a lettering/type perspective, is it possible to subdue the curves in c, d, e, a etc. to preserve the "picket fence ethos" that Blackletter is so famous for? I like the rounded quality in the capitals.
I don't understand your point about the capital |S|. While the circular arcs in many of my letters violate pen rules for the sake of geometry, the |S| happens to be made entirely of pen-friendly strokes. Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch even has exactly the kind of stroke I'm using on the left side of the |S| (and uses a different architecture on the right half). What exactly "shows a lack of understanding of the pen form" here?
@ Max: I'm aware that the pointy-tipped strokes feel like they're "hovering" a bit. I actually like that effect, it gives the font a certain lightness. Of course, I do want those strokes to line up with the other lowercase letters. The current version already include some adjustments (the curved or even horizontal strokes end close to, but not on, the baseline and x-height), but I guess I haven't gone far enough with that.
I'm rather partial to 45°, since it embodies the geometric cleanness I'm aiming for. Of course, I have blatantly cheated before (such as with the not-at-all circular stroke of the traditional-style |G|), but I wouldn't want those angles to stand at odds with the other 45° cuts and strokes I have everywhere in the font... and I don't feel changing all the angles everywhere in the font.
Do you think I could solve the problem by extending the vertical strokes a bit more, rather than changing their cut angle?
And of course I agree that 45° enhances the face's geometric feel to it, but you might find that 40° has the same feel—in fact, it might look more like 45° than 45° does—and that the 5° difference is not noticeable or bothersome. Cheating is good. Renner cheated all over the place while drawing Futura, and the final product still has a strong enough geometric feel to inspire you 85 years later.
Why not just try modifying the terminal angle on /m, /n, /i, /l, and /o, and see how it plays with your caps and other glyphs were 45° is really baked into the design? Shouldn't take too long to run up a variant font.
I haven't changed the slope on the descender of |g|. Is that jarring? I see it when I look at it purposefully, but not at first sight. I suppose I could restructure the descender to accommodate the new angle, too, but then things get a bit more complicated. I rather like the new |d|, though.
The /g/ being a bit different is no problem at all in my view.
Here's the entire new lowercase. I also like the new |o| much better. I lowered the ascender of |t| a bit, as it is often the case in Roman fonts... does that work in blackletter?
I'm not sure but I think your curved thick lines are optically a tiny bit too heavy compared to the straight thicks--see the dark /g/ in ngnhn or the dark /o/p/q/ in nlnnonpnqn.
As for the crossbars in |f t|, I originally started out with diagonal cuts on both sides, but found that used too much horizontal space for too little visual impact. Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch also has a slightly out-of-character vertical cut on those crossbars, so I guess Koch had the same problem. ;o)
Here's a line-up of three versions, which the status quo on the left and your suggestion of mirroring the left spur on the right. In the middle, I made the right part of the crossbar longer while retaining the diagonal cut — it works pretty well, but I'm not sure yet whether the improved consistency is worth the loss in readability. What do you think?
Curve thicknesses look better, maybe still could be thinned further but it's hard to tell from this rasterized example. I don't think the Briem rule is inapplicable because these curves are vertical enough; rather the main thing is that they don't thin at all unlike in a conventional typeface with contrast. An /o/ in something like Bodoni has to have thicker thicks than an /l/ primarily because it's at its thickest only for an instant unlike the straight stems. But your monoline curves are a different animal.
Looks like we're close to converging on a final version, though... neat!