Tips for Building a Thin Master from an Existing Black Weight

darkthrone
darkthrone Posts: 2
in Type Design Technique & Theory
Hi everyone, I’m new to type design & fontlab and I have a question about building a font family. I’ve already designed the Black weight of my typeface, and I’m wondering — is there a recommended method, formula, or set of calculations for creating the Thin master from it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Best Answer

  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 331
    edited September 23 Answer ✓
    What you are trying to identify is the skeleton of the typeface, which you get when you remove all of the mass. This is not a purely mathematical process, but removing mass is more straightforward than adding mass.

    You will benefit from reading Gunnlaugur Briem's notes, especially all of the pages related to BOLD:

    https://help.fontlab.com/fontlab/8/tutorials/briem/4-2-bold/briem-4-21-exercise2/

    Also, take a few example fonts and inspect and measure them for a reference. In the first years, I extensively measured other fonts, and made notes on each character with comments for most typical cases (sans/serif/lo/high contrast).

    Here is the discussion I started when I had similar questions:
    https://typedrawers.com/discussion/3612/what-is-best-practise-in-variable-font-development#latest

    I agree with what John has said, about Regular. Would just like to add that sometimes for display fonts, the DNA of the typeface might be strongest in extreme masters, like Black. And it is true that Black weight often has to add mass non-linearly, which in turn deforms intermediate styles. But the possible solution is to add glyph masters for the most problematic characters like /a, double-story /g, /w, etc. and then add a complete intermediate master in the future.

    I am mentioning this because of the font versioning methodology that I am trying to embrace :) 

Answers

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,529
    edited September 22
    To confirm: you have only a Black weight?

    It is quite challenging to go all the way from Black to Thin without at least one intermediary master, especially if you want all the stages between them to be viable. This is one reason a lot of designers start with the Regular weight, and then derive heavier and lighter designs from that (the other reason is that the Regular weight tends to be the most widely used and embodies the character of the typeface for the user).

    One approach to the situation you describe is to work on a Regular weight intermediary master next, and then use that to extrapolate a rough Thin master. The latter will still require work to refine the design, and get its proportions how you want in relationship to the Regular (Black designs tend to need the most optical adjustment to stroke and bowl weights and counter widths, while the Thin can be much more systematically related to the Regular proportions and stroke weights).
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,027
    Get a pencil and paper out. Use them to design your black weight. Recreate that design in your editing software. Make stuff interpolate. Add variants of characters that won’t interpolate to work in appropriate instances.
  • darkthrone
    darkthrone Posts: 2
    John Hudson said:
    To confirm: you have only a Black weight?

    It is quite challenging to go all the way from Black to Thin without at least one intermediary master, especially if you want all the stages between them to be viable. This is one reason a lot of designers start with the Regular weight, and then derive heavier and lighter designs from that (the other reason is that the Regular weight tends to be the most widely used and embodies the character of the typeface for the user).

    One approach to the situation you describe is to work on a Regular weight intermediary master next, and then use that to extrapolate a rough Thin master. The latter will still require work to refine the design, and get its proportions how you want in relationship to the Regular (Black designs tend to need the most optical adjustment to stroke and bowl weights and counter widths, while the Thin can be much more systematically related to the Regular proportions and stroke weights).
    The reason I began by creating the Black master is that I am working on a typeface revival based on an old beverage label, and the only reference available is the Black weight. Because of this, I’m looking for guidance on how to establish proper proportions when developing the Regular or Thin masters.

    James Puckett said:
    Get a pencil and paper out. Use them to design your black weight. Recreate that design in your editing software. Make stuff interpolate. Add variants of characters that won’t interpolate to work in appropriate instances.

    I’m wondering if there are any established formulas or guidelines for building a Thin master from a Regular.

    For instance, my Regular master has a stem width of 80. If I want the Thin to have a stem width of 20, is there a recommended calculation or proportional rule for determining the overall glyph widths, or is this usually done by eye?

    For example, should the width of the Thin H be a fixed percentage (e.g., 80%) of the Regular H, or is there a more systematic approach to deriving these proportions? 
  • Russell McGorman
    Russell McGorman Posts: 275
    edited 12:03AM
    :darkthrone said:

    I’m wondering if there are any established formulas or guidelines for building a Thin master from a Regular.

    For instance, my Regular master has a stem width of 80. If I want the Thin to have a stem width of 20, is there a recommended calculation or proportional rule for determining the overall glyph widths, or is this usually done by eye?

    For example, should the width of the Thin H be a fixed percentage (e.g., 80%) of the Regular H, or is there a more systematic approach to deriving these proportions? 
    This should help. Some good info for you in this thread:
    https://typedrawers.com/discussion/205/family-stem-weights-calculator/p1
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,027
    Try finding a copy of The Modification of Letterforms by Stan Hess. It explains how to work out a type family. You can also just pick typefaces you like and look at different weights on different layers in Illustrator or Indesign.

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