Hi, I'm new to type design and I feel the need for a process/plan to be more productive.
I don't make much daily progress as I find myself just keep perfecting small things rather than aiming for the finish line.
Also I'm not sure what's my finish line, goals or milestones.
The part I'm struggled with are punctuation, symbols, accented glyph, and italics.
Here's how I work currently:
- Lowercase and uppercase in Regular weight
- Spacing and basic kerning with classes for common pairs
- Create thin weight master, then interpolate for black master
- Punctuation and numbers
- Diacritics marks and accented glyph
- Italics
- More glyphs
What's your process/plan to be productive and get a typeface to finish?
What should be done on daily basis?
The finish might be in steps like version 0.1, 0.2 etc.
I think it's better to release smaller and frequent like those in Future Fonts.
Comments
One tip I would share is to not spend too much time perfecting any particular glyph. Move on to some other glyph or task. When you come back to it, problems that you couldn't see before will almost magically become visible. This can be true of a typeface as a whole. Setting something aside and coming back to it works really well. If you dwell on something for too long of a stretch, paradoxically it becomes more difficult to see critically.
On the other other hand, I find oftentimes it's only through that multiplication that the problem (and if lucky, its solution) becomes apparent.
The only downside is that you can only go so far with your light and black master: an ultra black, for instance, needs adjustments that will mess up the regular interpolation.
I used to draw Thin and Black masters, the reason I start with Regular Master is I can judge whether this will look good on regular text usage first. I also found the interpolated regular doesn't look great, but that's because I didn't know about Intermediate Master layer (:wt=400).
I think I need to watch more type drawing process, if there's any, since the process usually takes a long time and not many document their process in details.
My advice is to spend as little time on them as possible unless you think they may potentially be used (e.g., for a text face).
I think @Mark Simonson was thinking about losing oneself in details. Clearly the important things can benefit from being adjusted and perfectioned first (stem and contrast consistency, punctuation, etc.). What’s important, in my experience, is to take a break often, especially if you have the tendency to over-refine curves or non-essential details and things.
In other words, I start by making the font with minimum charset, no kerning etc, as good as possible, test it, use it, see how it works, from which you can see problems to fix. And only then continue to extending it for other languages, adding extra symbols.
Working on a few styles in parallel seem to be an essential part of that design process, but it depends.
- ho HO. Make these work to establish stems and rhythm. Proof on paper.
- Design adhesion ADHESION (the MaTD prototype) or handgloves HANDGLOVES (the KABK prototype). Proof on paper.
- Design the full alphabet, numbers, and some punctuation. Proof on paper.
- Design everything else. Proof on paper.
- Test my kerning proof. My kerning proof is a brute force proof that shows every alphabetic and numberic combination along with lots of punctuation possibilities. Doing this before kerning reveals spacing problems that would otherwise rear their fugly heads during kerning.
- Repeat steps 1–6 with subsequent masters. Keep outlines compatible as I go.
- Review every single glyph in each master to find problems.
- Kern with MetricsMachine. Proof kerning on paper. Fix problems in Glyphs. Repeat with subsequent masters.
- Export fonts, open them, and review every single glyph for problems that can be fixed before interpolation. Start with masters, then instances.
- Hint if necessary.
Testing on screens is important, too. But I’m drawing on a 5k iMac so I’m seeing the high resolution rendering that people will see on phones. I don’t bother testing on Windows until a font is hinted because unhinted fonts look gross on Windows.So far I preferred an approach where I am building text files with words that actually make sense and/or are more used in the more spoken languages, I find hard to kern out of context or single pairs on their own, I also think it’s tricky.
Only kerning words in the more spoken languages is not a fool-proof approach for a simple reason: there will be tons of combinations in less-spoken languages that you're bound to miss (assuming that you get every combo in English/Spanish/Etc, which you probably also won't).
If you have a hard time judging how much spacing you need, add an "nnn" or "HHH" or "non" or whatever helps you see the desired spacing clearly between each kerning pair.
Or make a row of "nnoonnoonnoo...", then a row of kerning pairs, repeat.
Good thread on kerning here.
That said, I do have a tentative list of the next few fonts I want to finish over the next year. I usually have three faces in the works and switch between them.
A significant part of my time goes to doing updates and fixes for released fonts. This is almost always driven by customer requests and feedback, including major things like adding cyrillic, additional styles or features. Updates tend to take priority over new releases.
I have a tendency to procrastinate, but I've found that if I just start doing something—anything—on a font, that will be enough to get things moving.
I don't know whether any of this would work for someone else, but it's a "system" that works for me.
But I still do not find the "every combo" (aaabacadaeaf...) approach effective, not because it’s tedious but because it does not show you the pairs in real context.
I think I have read and re-read most of the threads on kerning here, and many resources.
@James Puckett: Of course, I mean to look at pairs in more contexts, as I said I am just trying to create selections where 1) actual words are represented, and choosing the more common to start with; 2) have a varied but limited set of words with more critical pairs.
How’s the file you posted to be used? I do not own Robofont and thus no Metrics Machine, I guess.
MetricsMachine displays pairs in contexts. For example, HH<PAIR>DD<PAIR>OO. You can create as many contexts as you want. I have contexts for uppercase, lowercase, numbers, different types of punctuation, and math symbols.
At any rate, I miss the old Fontstudio feature, it was SO useful. There are online resources to generate texts, but none has that immediacy and ease of use.
Yes, I was trying to strike a balance between "wall of texts" including pairs which will never present themselves as critical and actual use. I will probably do the same, in the end.