Those of you who used to post in the old typophile forum (I seem to recall
@Christian Thalmann and
@Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian offered some feedback at the time) might remember this project from around 2014/5. A combination of factors led to it getting shelved, but I've decided to see if I can get it finished.
I'd really appreciate any thoughts.
A few things remain to be done (including caps and punctuation bearings/kerning), so I'm really looking for any suggestions for improving the Latin and Greek (monotonic) letterforms, and issues with lowercase spacing.
Please ignore the cyrillic glyphs; these were part of the original project, but I'm not planning on including them in the final version.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
Is the /a a bit too wide? /u too?
Descenders feel a little stumpy compared to ascenders.
Most above diacritics feel too close to the letter to me.
What's the intended size? Spacing in general seems well suited to small settings, but set bigger it feels too loose.
I'll look again at the /a and /u. I seem to recall someone else saying the /a in particular was a little wide.
Descenders were deliberately 'stumpy'. I think this stems from a comment @Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian made in typophile some years ago, but agree they could do with a touch more.
As for intended size, I guess small to medium settings. The truth is, this project started started as an accident, when I inadvertently move or deleted (I forget which) a node or handle in the /o from in another project. I liked the effect and ran with it, more as a practice exercise than in pursuit of a complete font, so I never really had a clear purpose in mind.
Nonetheless, I'll tighten the spacing a little to make it better suited to larger settings.
Looking better?
I haven't started on the italic yet. Lots of things need attention, but want to get this one looking better before tackling that one.
@jeremy tribby, thanks for pointing that out. I did have an error in the /h bearings. I also loosed the /ov and /vo kerning a touch. Better?
This may not be true from a sidebearing perspective, but the particular asymmetric shape of the “o” means that on one side it bulges towards the v and on the other side it shrinks away. So the best compromise is probably halfway between (1) what you have now (which likely equalizes sidebearings and total whitespace), versus (2) making it so that the closest measurement from the v-stem to the o (as measured perpendicular from the v-stem) is equal on both sides.
@Thomas Phinney, appreciate your feedback. The issue is complicated further by the fact that (1) the /v isn't symmetrical either and (2) the left stem of the /v is darker than the right.
I've adjusted the /o bearings a little, but I'm conscious the more I narrow the gap between the top of the /vo pair, the larger the gap between the bottom of the /ov pair (see flipped image).
You'll notice there's no punctuation or numerals. The original font file is such a mess that I decided to create a new one, which has only a small proportion of the intended glyph set. But, it should be enough to help determine if the problem is fixed.
Stems of l and i have different width, but that comes from the renderer as the PDF contains a rendered image.
I tweaked the /g as suggested—looks better.
@Helmut Wollmersdorfer, the diacritic on the /ó is at the same height as in the /é and /ć.
You're right about the /l and /i in that their stem widths are identical, so the apparent difference must be a function of the rendering.