Here's a little something I literally built over the the weekend. It's inspired by the broken antiqua signage in the old Berlin subway stations. Backstein is German for "[baked] brick".
The idea of a squarish gemetric font is hardly original, but I hope I brought in some fresh air with those rather unconventional letter forms (especially the {r} and {s}).
Here's a PDF specimen:
http://www.cinga.ch/type/backstein_specimen.pdf I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on it.
Cheers
Comments
I think the /L/ comes up to high on the right.
/S/ may be too wide. /c/ looks too narrow to me.
The "diagonals" of /x/ could be a little steeper. I sometimes read that /q/ as a /R/, but it could well just be me. You could also move the top joint of /s/ to the left so it is not confused with a /J/.
@ Craig: I quite like the narrow {c}, but I'll experiment with some wider cuts to see whether there's one I like more. Agreed on your other suggestions.
@ Alexis: Yes, the {x} is my least favorite letter here. Let's see what I can do about that. I can see how {q} and {s} look a bit like {R} and {j} in isolation, but when used within a word, I think their position wrt the x-height makes things pretty clear. As for tweaking the {s}, my impulse would be to go the opposite way and cut of the spur on the top right...
It is definitely suited better to display applications—at smaller sizes and larger blocks it begins to look like Klingon—but it does have nice color. I printed out your pdf and it looks very even and well kerned.
@ Tristan: Yes, I also got a distinct Klingon impression from the block text in the specimen, and it is very welcome. I might actually use that for my marketing material. {{{:{>
Also very glad to hear you like the color and spacing. Believe it or not, there's a grand total of 6 kerning pairs in this font, and the majority of them involve punctuation. The design is so rugged it doesn't need kerning... also, Glyphs makes it ridiculously easy and comfortable to do spacing and kerning (thanks Georg!).
/L is a bit too much like /U; I'd tame that foot serif. Maybe close the forms of /a and /e just a tad? Is /X too narrow? Is /S too wide?
Very attractive and distinctive.
I think it's beautiful, it has a Blackletter feeling (maybe inspired by your last project?). I would consider reducing the last stem of lowercase /w/ just to make it different from a rotated /m/, suggesting a different ductus just to see what happens. It would probably work well if the third stem starts when the second finishes. About the /r/, did you got inspiration from a more cursive letterform or in handwriting?
@ Daniel: As I mentioned earlier, my direct inspiration was broken antiqua as encountered in Berlin. However, I'd certainly say that the work on Gryffensee sensitized me to the beauty of broken type in the first place, and to the fact that it's an underrated parameter space in type design with huge unexplored territories in which to be creative.
And yes, that {r} is most certainly derived from the "curly" form common in handwriting (though the cursive I was taught in school had an antiqua-style {r}).
I've updated the PDF specimen if you'd like to see it in action.
http://bit.ly/17lXIQV