Redraw vs adjusting font (which is faster/easier?)

Carl Enlund
Carl Enlund Posts: 10
edited April 1 in Type Design Technique & Theory
This is me thinking out loud:
Isn't it sometimes faster/easier to redraw your font from scratch? When you realize a lot needs to be changed in the design.
Rather than trying to make adjustments to existing glyphs/nodes.

Redraw = throw away what nodes/paths you've drawn and draw them from scratch (perhaps keeping old drawing as visual reference).

Factors that can influence whether it's worth the effort to redraw font:

- current glyph count (maybe redrawing falls apart at >50-100 glyphs depending on complexity)
- how big the change is
- master compatibility
- if glyphs use simple construction that can be derived from a recipe, e.g. use /d to make /p - then you just follow that recipe to quickly redraw whole font from scratch
- how strictly you want to keep shapes/motifs consistent across glyphs (strict consistency could favor a redraw)

Types of changes I'm thinking of below. Would any of these be sufficient for redrawing from scratch:

- vibe feels off (biggest reason to redraw i believe)
- change genre
- proportions feel off across glyphs
- bad curve structure (tooling for harmonize and extremas are useful here)
- make font bold (tooling exists to avoid redrawing. And redrawing will break master compatibility)
- change spacing (use tooling duh)
- make italic
- make oblique (good tooling exists to avoid redrawing)

What are your thoughts? When to redraw font from scratch?

/Carl
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Comments

  • SCarewe
    SCarewe Posts: 44
    I think only your first two points would warrant a full redraw. It's hard to say without seeing a concrete file, because it might me a mess that's better left alone, as it would take more time to clean up than to start cleanly from scratch, with a visual reference, as you say.

    The other points, as long as it's just that, can be done in the same file rather easily – I would consider these technical aspects, not major design aspects. By the way, since you mention tools for creating obliques, I can't resist but mention my newly published algorithm: Italify

    I'm generally of the opinion that you can automate a huge amount of these things, as long as your sources are in a somewhat clean state. I've also worked on a few projects where I would have liked to tell the client to redraw from scratch, which would be more efficient than having to clean up everything.
  • Carl Enlund
    Carl Enlund Posts: 10
    Completely agree.

    Sometimes the system gets locked early, and then you're left mainly with technical adjustments. Then I'd definitely go with tools as well.

    When exploring many different designs early is where I'd rather use throwaway fonts to test adjacent designs that are just a bit too far apart to tweak the paths to match the next idea.

    And nice timing with Italify!


  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,781
    edited April 2
    At first I was going to say starting over might be a good idea, but thinking back, I’ve never actually done that on any of my fonts, even ones that were substantially different from each other, such as Proxima Sans and Proxima Nova. The outlines of PN can be traced back to Illustrator and Fontographer source files of Proxima Sans from the early nineties, passing through FontLab, RoboFont, and finally Glyphs. I can’t think of a type family I've made where I’ve started over when I’ve done a major redesign. I guess my thinking is that it’s easier and more efficient to rework something than to start over. That said, I have completely started over on individual glyphs and things like feature code and kerning. I’ve also thrown out the master I started with after refactoring masters.

    So, it may be a good idea to start over, but I don’t have experience with that.

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