type critic: "Wollner" a neo-grotesk (neo grotesque) sans-serif inspired by Alexandre Wollner

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  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    Craig Eliason said:
    /z and maybe /w may be too narrow. There's some lingering awkwardness in the humps of /h/n/m (looks thick at 12 o'clock and pinched at 2 o'clock). 
    i've be dealing with the z dilemma before, but when i make it larger for me it just looks extremely agressive! 

    i don't feel like it's natural 

  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,412
    edited May 1
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    Perhaps just lengthening the top horizontal (and potentially the bottom one a tiny bit too) would be enough to give it a substantial-enough width and also address the lean that @jeremy tribby mentioned. Of course, set it in real words to judge the adjustment. 
  • jeremy tribby
    jeremy tribby Posts: 233
    edited May 1
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    z is hard to judge in isolation but I agree with craig, I think the issue I saw is probably more about balancing what you had than widening the whole form
    DiegoSouza said:
    This type is more of a tribute to wollner, it should remember helvetica/univers 
    fair enough! I'm glad you are keeping some of the more subtly unique features in any case; helvetica/univers would have been contemporary to wollner, but are more dated now; your own typeface can keep things contemporary through its own voice (and in that way, keep things related to wollner, beyond just the typefaces used)
  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    Update: 

    a bowl refined
    t ascender made shorter and horizontal stroke is bigger now and and the bottom horizontal stroke it's sligthly thicker (also the curve is thicker)
    f has it's horizontal strokes slightly reduced 
    h, m,n, p and q now has slight bent (to the left) top  vertical strokes, in my opinion it added more cleanness to the topand gave a illusion of more natural form meanwhile it still invisible to the everyday person 
    y now has it's left lateral stroke sligtly thicker 
    x has a lower contrast and a bigger bottom overall
    w vertex are now closer but it's perpendicular legs are more open now (compensation for the apex)
    z was almost completly redesigned the only thing that didn't changed was it's horizontal stroke height
    m,n and h bowels are more thick at two o'clock (recommendation that i took)
    j bottom curve also made thicker

    And for the for themost part i think that i'm good to go for the upper-case letters, i still having some issues with spacing and the letter g needs some attention too but overall i think that's a great start 
     





  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    i recently was adjusting the upper-case stroke thickness to match the lower-case ones, i think that i found a sweet spot more to the slight thicker side but i think it's ok. 

    Typing some word i've tried Europe e i think it's beatiful even without E bearings adjusted, thinks seems to go together now!


  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,787
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    Lots of things are working now! Definitely getting there.

    Small detail: your baseline is the baseline, but the x-height is set to the overshoot rather than the “flat” x-height. If you have blue zones or auto-hinting happening, you will want to fix that.

    There are a lot of weight inconsistencies still.

    The a seems much heavier than the o. I look at how much the p thins at the joins and wonder why the a does less at the bottom and not at all at the middle.

    The outer curve of the p seems heavier than the same part of the o.

    The vertical parts of u look thinner than the bottom curve

    The cap E seems a lot heavier than the lowercase. Normal difference in a regular weight would be for the equivalent strokes in a capital letter to be 4–10% heavier. This seems like quite a bit more than that.
  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    @Thomas Phinney thanks for the alerts/tips, the middle of the a was thinner in older versions but after many increments i made it thicker and only slightly thinner than a horizontal stroke, i found it to be distinctive  and mixing well with the letters. I'm going to try to follow your tips and give it more balance, but i don't think that i'm going to throw off the thick middle soon... 
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,787
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    Maybe a slightly thinner join on that middle would be good. But overall, it just looks heavier than other letters. Perhaps best to re-evaluate after making some other adjustments, though.

    Don’t let the criticisms fool you, though! This has come a long way—congrats! First typefaces are hard....
  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    oh well... trying to fix the pqdb inconsistency i've found very dificult to achieve balance with that width so i made it bigger, then the bpdq at that point where the dissonant voices. So yeah everybody now is bigger.

    after i found very difficult to match the same shape balance with a wider form, specially some letters like a that now is basically a whole new thing. 

    Now i'm looking to the work partially done i it's left a after taste of lost progress! 


  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    @Thomas Phinney

    and i almost forgot, you're right all the time there was a overshoot issue, not because of clipping but because it was small, now everybody is a little taller too 
  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    some bearings adjestment and redrawing after... 

    there we go:


    missing letters are scheduled for adjustments 


  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    talking about ligatures, i think that ry can be a nice one.


  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
    edited May 25
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    post edited for corrections
  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    that's my last "state of the art" i've fixed w width but i might made it too short on a word like twitter it matches in my opinion so i would like to hear about it.


  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
    edited May 26
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    and i agree that e needs some refinaments more
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,787
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    It is a small thing, but it appears that you have set your x-height vertical metric to the x-height overshoot level, instead of the x-height. Assuming you are generating a hinted font, this will create rendering issues in many environments (though presumably not macOS/iOS).
  • jeremy tribby
    jeremy tribby Posts: 233
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    /k /w /v /u /x read as a little bit wide
    /z a tiny bit narrow

    your /s has gotten a bit lumpy over time. in this earlier screenshot you posted, perhaps the paths and slant of spine weren't quite what you wanted, but the curves themselves look more evenly balanced to me





  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    @jeremy tribby
    i don't really know how hinting works but i have some adobe documents explaining how it works...  this time i've tried to fix it with autohinting, the hinting that you are seeing is from fontforge font redering engine. And a quick question does auto hint works for truetype? that's the file type that i'm using.
  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
    edited May 27
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    @jeremy tribby
    you're completly right i've tried to give more movement to the typeface adding some small irregularities like slightly slanted parts. After making s bigger it was basically destroyed so it's almost a completly redesign, it was way worse but i'm trying to fix it, oveall i found it to be really hard achieving balance on the middle without it looking that it's going backwards, i've tried to slant it, rotate it everything but always something ends up off.

    I'm not complaining besides being frustrating it quite fun to play with it and see all those ridiculous forms on the screen. 

    sometimes it remembers a brazilian graphic designer that made a typeface out of hands moviments it's called pandemonium type






  • DiegoSouza
    DiegoSouza Posts: 60
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    one of hardest things in type design is that yu basically solely depends on your eyes, there is no universal measure, playbook or international standart for it... intriguing!

    there's no kerning, s still on the go for adjustments k,u,v,x,y are smaller and z is bigger now w might be a little bit clogged. 

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