Type designers always say "trust your eyes", but in fact, once you start working on complex type-design projects (multiple masters, large glyph sets, etc.), you realize this nonsystematic approach has its limits. At the very least, it's time consuming.
That raises the question of how to maintain letter-form consistency when simple copy-paste isn't good enough.
For instance, making the top and bottom halves of an s look "the same" is hard and time consuming. I've recently found myself involving all sorts of measurements in the process. Another example is equalizing the apparent tension (curvature) of rounded shapes which are related but not identical.
How do you approach this issue? Do you freely move nodes around while relying solely on your eyes? And if not, what do you do? If you could describe some key examples in detail, that would be awesome.
On a related note, I'm also interested in what compromises you make in order to keep things simple and manageable. I mean stuff like "all my overshooting letters overshoot by the same amount regardless of their shape", "I skip making letters such as I,l a bit wider", etc.
Thanks!
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About the overall consistency, I try to use longer text in 24pt or less to scan through the text and read them, then zooms in on letters that jumps out.
Would love to hear others' opinion on this too.
* https://typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/51797/#Comment_51797
So for example in an "S" (with contrast) I would start with a spine exactly as thick as the diagonal of the "N", make it thicker by some amount (which I record for possible re-use) because it's a curve and not a line, and place it higher than the middle by some amount (centering to the bar of the "H", although crucially only provisionally). Depending on the desired relative widths of the "S" and the "N" I would rotate the spine (BTW probably not bother recording that number). Then I would move to the top and bottom, overshooting them by the predetermined amount, and making them diverge in width depending on the desired mood of the design. If there are serifs I would start by copying the one in the "G", but change their sizes (by some, probably recorded amount) depending on the relative counter sizes. And then I let go. The rest is beyond conscious grasp (although any amounts recorded above that shift do get noted for possible re-use elsewhere) and the eye takes over, jumping between the various parts of the letterform, iterating until it's essentially no longer *reasonable* to do so. BTW only your eye, and only at that moment – it will for sure shift over time, although with experience less than an –actionable– amount.
So to me it's essentially a hybrid between the exact and the unknown (which I argue is furthermore *unknowable* in the end). Crucially, it's a non-deterministic process, where certainty doesn't get you nearly as far as one might like... Denying that yields poor results, such as unmodulated calligraphic/geometric fonts.
In short: if mathematically equal actually looks equal, stick with that. If it doesn't, trust your eyes. Any system you devise to make deviating from mathematical equality easier, is likely flawed, and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Also, it’s less important than it was 30 years ago, but keeping matching numbers (stem widths, overshoots) the same is important when there’s no reason for them to be different. It’s very common for, say, a lowercase stem to drift off by a unit or two for no good reason. Making sure numbers are the same where they are intended to be means more consistent auto-hinting, rendering, etc.
(And understanding how and when hinting works, and what the tolerances for error are, is helpful when one starts make adjustments by eye.)
@Hrant H. Papazian, when you say you record measures, what does it look like in practice and what do you do with that later? Are you like adding a note to the glyph saying something like "for the serif I took the one from G and scaled it 85%"? And then later when you draw another weight you'd use that to repeat the the same process?