A new Art Deco, and the hunt for Broadway Greek/Cyrillic

Tofu Type Foundry
Tofu Type Foundry Posts: 26
in Type Design Critiques
I'm working on a typeface inspired by Broadway and Bifur. Both these classics have some lovely design qualities that I wanted to see combined: Bifur’s unweilding geometric discipline married with Broadway’s high contrast and (more) legible letterforms. I was also curious to see how far the contrast could be pushed. For the sake of simplicity this has remained an all caps typeface.

I could see this being used anywhere from restaurant signage to cocktail menus. It’s not meant for paragraphs of text. A lower contrast companion may be helpful, but I don't want the design to lose its personality. Here are a couple glyphs that show what I mean.

As an experiment, I've testing how the letterforms work when applied to other scripts—Cyrillic and Greek. I have zero experience designing for these scripts though so the design is likely full of flaws. While looking for reference of Bifur and Broadway I couldn't locate any signs that they ever received a Greek or Cyrillic expansion. Does anyone know otherwise? It seems overall that non-Latin scripts have very little when it comes to this type style.
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Comments

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,137
    edited October 13
    I’m not familiar with Greek or Cyrillic in this specific style, but there are definitely examples of Art Deco Cyrillic lettering and typography. Look for e.g. Russian film posters of the period.

  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 791
    The typically stressed part of N is actually the diagonal (missed by many).
    Your cyrillic Ц is incomplete.
    Greek is, in this case, the most tricky, especially letters with syncopic stress pattern (Ξ, Σ). A very interesting task though. (I once did an Art Deco Greek with much pleasure).

  • Tural Alisoy
    Tural Alisoy Posts: 46
    I tried to explain my thoughts in the attached file.
    deco.pdf 701.8K
  • Tofu Type Foundry
    Tofu Type Foundry Posts: 26
    John Hudson said:
    I’m not familiar with Greek or Cyrillic in this specific style, but there are definitely examples of Art Deco Cyrillic lettering and typography. Look for e.g. Russian film posters of the period.

    Thanks for the recommendation @John Hudson! I've been looking into old posters now and stumbled across a Russian book cover for Art Deco: Flights of Artistic Fantasy by Suzanne A. Sternow. It appears to feature Broadway with Cyrillic characters—but this could just be a graphic designer modifying the Latin to their needs.



    Nonetheless, I though you might enjoy some of the other typefaces from various sources. The Й in the last poster is especially creative.


  • Tofu Type Foundry
    Tofu Type Foundry Posts: 26
    Andreas Stötzner said:
    The typically stressed part of N is actually the diagonal (missed by many).
    Your cyrillic Ц is incomplete.
    Greek is, in this case, the most tricky, especially letters with syncopic stress pattern (Ξ, Σ). A very interesting task though. (I once did an Art Deco Greek with much pleasure).

    @Andreas Stötzner Great catch on the /Ц! I initially gave the /N reverse contrast because I was trying to emulate the "skyscraper feeling" of Plaza’s /N but I don't think it works as well here. I've make a couple variations of the /N but am thinking of ditching the last two in the PDF.

    Can you explain what a syncopic stress pattern is? I tried looking it up but couldn't find information. The Greek definitely is difficult though. While looking through Parachute’s typefaces I found a unique solution for /Ξ they use in Marlet Titling. It’s got me wondering if something similar would work here…



    And I must say Artemis Sans is classy! Love the rhythm in the letterforms.

    @Tural Alisoy Those notes were extremely helpful, thanks for sharing! Here's a quick breakdown of the revisions I made:
    • Refined /Д/П/К/Ж/И/Й/Ы/Б/Ш/Щ/Ч/Ю and /brevecomb-cy based on your suggestions
    • Added missing “tooth” on /Ц and corrected contrast
    • Localized forms for Bulgarian /Д/П/Ф/И/Й
    • Added stylistic set for "stacked" /Ы, "thick centre" /Њ, and "flat-sided" /Ћ/Ђ (just for fun)
    • New additions of /Љ/Њ/Ћ/Ђ/Џ/Ґ
    I'm wondering if /Л should be localized for Bulgarian too? Glyphs app automatically has a localized variant for it. Also, should the Latin breve follow the Cyrillic and be a similar width? Or does Cyrillic require a wider form?
  • Tural Alisoy
    Tural Alisoy Posts: 46
    @Tofu Type Foundry everything looks good. Regarding the last two points @Igor Petrovic you should check out this link written by It will be useful for you. Additionally, I want you to know that you need to localize the letter Л for Bulgarian. But there is also such a thing, the Bulgarian version Л and Д are used in Russian, Ukrainian and other Cyrillic alphabets, but not use vice versa. Bulgarians only use the letter Л and Д, similar to a triangular shape. Latin breve is different from brevecomb-cy. brevecomb-cy should be relatively wide.

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