Drawing greek letters

Jani Paavola
Jani Paavola Posts: 54
in Type Design Critiques
As I'm updating my Fridag Sans font family published few years ago, I got suggested to add greek support. I have never drawn greek letters before, so I'm asking for opinions: How does it look so far?

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Comments

  • Paul Hanslow
    Paul Hanslow Posts: 176
    edited February 11
    Jani, as I'm not an expert on Greek. However, Gerry Leonidas' resources on designing Greek are very helpful to newcomers to the designing Greek. link

    Some things which stood out to me upon first look (in the Bold weight:
    • The /pi looks wide in comparison to round counters/bowls.
    • the lower bowl of /psi should sit lower and be on the baseline, similar to the Latin /o.
    • /lambda looks wide. 
    • beta looks very wide in comparison to other Greek letters.
    • /omega looks wide to my eyes also.

    Overall its a pretty good start!  :)
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 968
    To add to Paul’s observations:
    • /theta also looks too wide to me.
    • Bold /Delta could be wider at the base. (Light also, but to a lesser degree perhaps.)
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,447
    edited February 11
    I think the curved but stiff lead-ins and lead-outs in the Greek lowercase work well—I’d actually suggest changing the ear of Latin /g to conform more. Though I guess that’s not feedback you’re seeking!
  • ameacute
    ameacute Posts: 4
    edited February 11
    Your design looks promising Jani.

    I am adding a few observations to the comments of Paul and Kent; I hope those are useful :)
    • /xi bottom horizontal stroke does go enough to the right.
    • /beta looks rather wide in the bold.
    • /phi and /psi should have a similar ascender height.
    • /delta bold leans to the left; it should be re-balanced.
    • /iota is very narrow and would benefit from a longer out-stroke.
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,247
    edited February 11
    Don’t just look at the alphabet, try it in Greek text.
    (I give the same advice for all language scripts.)
  • Jani Paavola
    Jani Paavola Posts: 54
    Thank you for your tips all! 

    @Craig Eliason, I'll definitely try it.

    ameacute said:
    • /xi bottom horizontal stroke does go enough to the right.
    Was this observation opposing somebody saying is doesn't, or is it missing something?
  • ameacute
    ameacute Posts: 4

    • /xi bottom horizontal stroke does go enough to the right.
    Was this observation opposing somebody saying is doesn't, or is it missing something?

    Sorry for not being clear enough.

    I meant the horizontal stroke of /xi needs to expand to the right. The letter looks leaning to the right because the 'base' is not large enough.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,139
    My initial impression was that it looked about as good as the Greek in many typefaces provided by major vendors which were not primarily intended as Greek-language typefaces. Although I am neither a native speaker of Greek nor in any other way an expert on this sort of thing, though, I noticed one detail in your typeface which may be a problem.
    The fact that the pillar on the left of the lowercase pi is just a straight line. (At least it's slightly slanted, as I didn't notice at first.) This seems to me as unusual even for a sans-serif typeface of this type.
  • Jongseong Park
    Jongseong Park Posts: 27
    Greeks are quite used to sans serif designs where even both legs of the lowercase letter pi are straight vertical lines, for example in road signs. Even designs where pi looks like ⊓ are fairly common. So a design where the left leg is just a straight vertical line is by no means unusual, though of course it doesn't follow that it's the way to go.

    I will say that the goal here is probably to make it look good setting a text in Greek for readers of Greek (i.e., not as a collection of letters for mathematical symbols). While I am not the biggest fan of forced geometric simplification in Greek type, for a neo-grotesque a straight vertical left leg for lowercase pi is arguably appropriate.
  • ameacute
    ameacute Posts: 4
    Letter shapes are flexible matter.

    The idea here is to find balanced letterform combinations. To give an example: if the straight legs of pi is maintained in the design, extreme cursive strokes elsewhere will come across as odd. 

    Like Gerard Unger used to tell us in class, type design is like cooking; you have to add the right amount of spices, in a balanced combination. Bon appétit!
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,247
    edited February 14
    It’s worth comparing the commercial designs at Parachute, a Greek foundry, with the academic orthodoxy that is generally followed by non-native designers of Greek types. Not quite as loggerheads as Vignelli vs. Emigre, but still… 
  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 1,993
    Nick Shinn said:
    It’s worth comparing the commercial designs at Parachute, a Greek foundry, with the academic orthodoxy that is generally followed by non-native designers of Greek types. Not quite as loggerheads as Vignelli vs. Emigre, but still… 
    I'm surprised at Parachute’s persistent use of x-high /eta/ and /chi/, triangular /nu/ and square /pi/, etc. I feel I wouldn't get away with that. Well, maybe now that I have somewhere to point... ;)
  • Jani Paavola
    Jani Paavola Posts: 54
    John Savard said:
    (At least it's slightly slanted, as I didn't notice at first.) 

    Actually not slanted at all. :smile:

  • Jani Paavola
    Jani Paavola Posts: 54
    Christian Thalmann said:
     absurd hovering /psi/.
    Absurd indeed, I really have no clue where I got that idea.
  • Jani Paavola
    Jani Paavola Posts: 54
    Thank you all for your observations. Here's the progress now:
     
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,316
    The proportions of the heavier weight are better than the light. In the light, the κ π and τ are too narrow.

    The vertical of the τ should be offset slightly to the left of centre on the crossbar when it has a curled outstroke, as here. Otherwise, it can appear unbalanced and as if it may topple backwards.
  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 802
    There are many weight distribution issues especially in the bold cut; e.g. with G, K, M, N, R, S, X, Y, Z; capital Sigma, Xi, Psi and others. Gamma is too wide, Phi and Omega are unbalanced. K/Kappa is unsolved. Lambda is unsolved, Z/Zeta as well.
    For the lowercase, I think a, e, s, w look horribly unmanaged; lowercase beta is a bad joke, delta epsilon and zeta as well. Lowecase theta is much too dark compared to e.g. eta; kappa is suffering lethal darkness in the centre. Xi is unbalanced, phi is too dark as well. The whole design seems to be dominated by a mechanistic helveticaistic bias and lacks basic feeling for the essence of what a type design actually ought to be: a balanced system of shape details and proportions.

    I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But if I were you I would drop this whole project for 6 months, go down and study the taste and smell of greek type first; and then – eventually – get back to it with a new, fresh approach.

    I have never been a believer of helveticaism in type and I confess I loath it (for good reasons), and that, inevitably, bends my course of judgement. But that is only one half of the business.
    The other half is, even the worst design idea (like Helvetica style) *can* be executed masterly. And what I see here is a) a not overly convincing design idea (helveticaism) and b) a lack of basic mastering skills (independent of the choise of style).

    Take a break and get a beer (or, even better) an Ouzo…



  • Jani Paavola
    Jani Paavola Posts: 54
    Andreas Stötzner said:

    I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. 

    Oh there's no bad news! I only see somewhat valid criticism and points to learn something and improve. The fact that you loath the original typeface of course bends your jugdement. And I love Helvetica. And beer.
  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Posts: 199
    @Jani Paavola
    I'm in the same position as you: I have never drawn greek letters before.

    As I intend to include them in a new font, I'm wondering which glyphs are required apart  from the original letters. Diacritics or other...
    Am I right if I include from Unicode 0384 (tonos) to 03CE (omega with tonos)?
    Thank you for your help!
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,316
    Regarding diacritics...

    There are two standardised orthographies for the writing of Greek: polytonic and monotonic. While the latter is the standard orthography of modern Greece, both systems are in use within the country, and outside of Greece polytonic is the more common because of its role in classics education and publishing.

    Am I right if I include from Unicode 0384 (tonos) to 03CE (omega with tonos)?
    That will give you monotonic Greek support. For some styles of typeface, that is reasonable target. If a typeface is unlikely to be used for polytonic texts, its okay to only support monotonic. But if you are making text faces for books, you should consider supporting polytonic.
  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Posts: 199
    edited February 18
    Thank you John!
    The fonts I create are ready for most of the "latin" languages, including Polish and Vietnamese, for instance.
    Could you give me the Unicode range of glyphs necessary to support polytonic texts?
  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 802
    Yves Michel said:
    …
    Could you give me the Unicode range of glyphs necessary to support polytonic texts?

    Want to just look into the Unicode standard yourself?
    It’s not all that difficult.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,316
    It’s basically the Unicode Greek Extended block [PDF], but there are some complications at the glyph level, including some Greek specific forms of common combining mark characters such as U+0300 (grave=varia) and U+0301 (acute=oxia=tonos), and a distinction in practice between subscript and adscript iotified uppercase vowels that needs stylistic set handling (and a choice about which to treat as default, which depends on target market).
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,316
    Nick Nicholas’ intimidatingly thorough explication of Greek Unicode remains an excellent resource.
  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Posts: 199
    edited February 18
    @John Hudson
    Thanks a lot John. Maybe I'll stick to the monotonic part for my first experience.

    @Andreas Stötzner
    I was asking John, sorry! I know he's a very nice expert. That's one of the meanings of this forum, isn't it?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,945
    By way of comparison, here are the Greek letterforms from Helvetica World. They seem more organic than the shapes in Fridag Sans. (I don’t remember with certainty, but it seems to me that a certain other forum participant in this thread designed the Greek for this. If that is true and public knowledge, I imagine they will speak up.)
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,247
    As your Latin has one signature character—the /g—then perhaps the Greek should follow suit. Perhaps give the top of xi a little squiggle, like the ear of /g.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,316
    I don’t remember with certainty, but it seems to me that a certain other forum participant in this thread designed the Greek for this.
    You remember correctly.
  • mitradranirban
    mitradranirban Posts: 41
    A little off-topic here,  but I found Greek people now want a fix in their digital typography
    https://www.openpetition.eu/gr/petition/online/digital-greek-typography-is-broken-improve-standards-and-demand-fixes-in-all-software

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