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Unnamed squarish font with felt tip pen handwriting influences

DrawcardDrawcard Posts: 51
edited May 2021 in Type Design Critiques
Looking for any feedback / critique from this fine community :)

For this one, I have initially drawn inspiration from square / squircle typefaces like Eurostile, but also drawing from a technical 'Rotring pen' look found in typefaces like Tekton (mostly evident in the /i/ /l/ and /h/) - to add a bit of character and interest & go beyond the regular rounded terminal look.

Since then I've been tuning the weight (intended to be regular) and fixing up some clogging where the bowls join etc. 

I also introduced a very subtle vertical rise to add a little bit of movement / rhythm to the type, about 2.5° or so on the horizontals. Hopefully it isn't too distracting, but it's intended to give the design some lift.

I'm thinking of pitching it for headline / display use with a scientific or technological purpose, like titling for a presentation or a conference maybe. 

This is a first draft, I have just completed the Latin alphabet and am figuring out other characters currently. Spacing & kerning is still being worked on :)







Comments

  • Craig EliasonCraig Eliason Posts: 1,398
    Straight-to-straight side bearings are too tight. The pretty even width of other letters makes the /t and /f feel narrow. I’d also make the /t and /f crossbars the same height. 
  • Vasil StanevVasil Stanev Posts: 762
    edited May 2021
    I would go with a squarish /w (inversed m) and a flat-top A, avoiding all slight curving. Generally, I think the uppercase is too different to the lowerscase in style and in the way the D, M and A are less rigid. Either one or the other.
    You have a similar issue with the Uppercase as with the lowercase - too different widths and so on. I didn't see a specimen attached. You should show us all the letters so we can tell you more :)

    The slanted horizontal bars are a slippery slope, judging from a font I did 12 years ago. You may get away with it in P, but set the b and d next to eachother and you get a very wavy picture. Better play safe and keep them straight and strictly horizontal; it seems you are after a rigid style, the quirkiness may come from the "serifs".


    But it is a solid start!

  • Claudio PiccininiClaudio Piccinini Posts: 677
    Eurostile does not have square forms, anyway. It just uses superellipsis. A very different thing.
  • K PeaseK Pease Posts: 182
    The inward slopes toward the stems of the stemmed letters are sound and good. The problem is that they interact with the up-sloping round letters to give the general impression of chaotic crookedness, and it may be the latter that you'll need to give up to remedy this. It is possible you could retain many of the upslopes on the x-height while flattening the baseline. But the upper left and bottom right corners seem too sharp of especially /O and to lesser degrees /o/C/c/e. My advice would be to first design a bilaterally symmetrical /o that looks okay in this context, and then refer to it when making any other changes.
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