Hundar, a workhorse typeface for general and specialist usage

Emily de Oliveira Santos
Emily de Oliveira Santos Posts: 2
edited October 18 in Type Design Critiques
Hi everyone, I hope you're all having a nice day!
I wanted to request feedback/critiques on a typeface project I've been working on, Hundar.
Sample Image
The project is very ambitious in that it hopes to provide an OFL-licensed workhorse typeface with optical sizes, an accompanying sans style, as well as support for a broad range of languages (including extensive Latin, Greek and Cyrillic support) + eventually also specialist usage (math, phonetics, medieval studies). Its design also makes use of modern/experimental ideas rather than following more traditional forms like transitional serifs and such.
I've attached below a proof focusing on [A-Z][a-z][0-9] (which I've recently redesigned) and one math document. Here:
- Kerning is "optical";
- The Bold and Italic styles in the math document are pretty experimental;
- The math font is a temporary placeholder.
- Ligatures are disabled for now (I first want to get the letter shapes finished to avoid generating extra work in having to keep editing the ligatures)
Would love to hear your thoughts on the typeface!

P.S. Here's the typeface website: https://hundartypeface.com/.
There's in particular a “Progress” tab where I'll be trying to keep track of roughly where the project is in regards to the initial release: https://hundartypeface.com/progress.html.
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Comments

  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,213
    You have made some bold use of straight or nearly-straight lines in places I would not expect (a la Preissig), but tempered them more traditional curves and some serious swelling over the length of a given stem.

    I am really liking this a lot. Thanks for sharing it!
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,863
    edited October 19
    There’s a lot going on, much of it good, and it isn’t boring, which I appreciate. I don’t think it is quite gelling, yet: angular shapes tend to favour quite condensed horizontal proportions, but you are mixing them with more rounded shapes, and getting the balance of the widths might use some more work. There are some spacing issues like the right side of the j, which is very tight, but perhaps this is a result of the optical kerning in the test document? It would be nice to see it without the optical kerning applied, even if this means some necessary pairs are unkerned, so we can better understand the core spacing.
    I like the idea of developing this into a math font. We could use some more interesting typefaces for math and science texts.
  • jeremy tribby
    jeremy tribby Posts: 304
    ambitious indeed!  in H, the symmetrical curve inward of vertical strokes toward the crossbar sort of imply an interior roundedness that I don't feel so strongly in other uppercase vertical strokes such as F and E. and there's also not quite an analogy in the lowercase, which might be causing a little bit of tension. I think if I were trying to work this out I might try to figure out what tool would make sense to construct these letters (even if you might fashion such a tool out of something non-obvious) and do a bit of analog experimentation with it before I lock in the system. preventing a more harmonious version of this typeface from feeling too mechanical might be part of the work ahead (especially on the sans you have planned), but I think you've done a nice job of this already. it's a small thing, but the right sides of g, a, and t, could probably use a couple units less space. charming typeface
  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 2,092
    Yes, this is coming along nicely. I second the motion to remove optical kerning and show the underlying spacing; currently the occasional overkerning is hurting the rhythm.
    You’ll need to put in some more work to balance out the color across the typeface. Look at the word academic in the sample: The /a/ are significantly heavier than /c/ and /d/. The word Hundar in the display cut in particular shows that the top of the bowl in /d/ is too light. (I understand the urge to lighten it; it's an awkward joint between two heavy strokes, but you’ve overdone it.)
  • Dan Reynolds
    Dan Reynolds Posts: 191
    edited October 19
    Several of the letterforms bear uncanny similarity to Leipziger Antiqua, but I didn’t find any mention of design influences in the documentation. That would be good to add, for any kind of project!

    The original designer also created a Cyrillic extension for the typefaces, IIRC.

    There are already a few versions of Leipziger Antiqua on the market now, at least one of which was authorized. None of them are distributed with OFL licenses, but I guess these days that is no reason anymore not to jump on the band wagon.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,268
    Thomas Phinney said:
    You have made some bold use of straight or nearly-straight lines in places I would not expect

    Indeed!
    I looked up Leipziger Antiqua - it also does that, but only a little, in comparison. So the similarity of some glyphs may simply be the inevitable result of achieving, with straight lines, the same appearance at a smaller scale as the traditional curves.
  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 2,092
    Eh, Hundar is quite a bit friendlier, wider and less blacklettery than Leipziger, I don’t think there’s any grounds for accusations.
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,531
    On the topic of historical precedents, to me this looks a bit like a Preissig Antikva font that has spent some time in a rock tumbler. 
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 368
    It also reminds me of Maiola, Figural and Almendra.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,863
    Yes, this belongs to a fairly small genre of text types constructed from angular strokes. It’s the nature of such genres — small number of exemplars with a strong and distinctive character — that they all resemble each other and this resemblance is enhanced by how little they look like most other typefaces.
  • Emily de Oliveira Santos
    Emily de Oliveira Santos Posts: 2
    edited October 21
    Hey everyone, thank you very much for your feedback and kind words!
    Apologies also for taking a bit to reply — I work on type design as a hobby outside my usual work hours, so it’s sometimes a bit tough to reply in a timely way. Please don’t take this as a sign of ingratitude towards your feedback, however, as I truly appreciate it!
    Re: influences, I haven’t based Hundar on Leipziger Antiqua, but I’ve surely packed in influences from blackletter since the very beginning of the project. I’ve also indeed intended Hundar (and its earlier incarnation, Darwin Serif) to be very friendly from the start. In fact, I sometimes mentally picture Hundar as a typeface trying to combine blackletter features with a friendly style while preserving readability. I find this quite difficult to achieve. On a similar note, I wasn’t aware of Figural and Almendra, though I surely am very happy that I now am — these two are awesome typefaces!
    I’ll also prepare a new proof once I’ve fixed spacing, colour, and width and share it here. Thank you very much for the feedback in this regard!

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    (Individual replies follow below.)

    @.Thomas Phinney
    > I am really liking this a lot. Thanks for sharing it! 
    It’s my pleasure! Thank you for your kind words, I’m very happy that you liked it!

    @.John Hudson
    > getting the balance of the widths might use some more work. There are some spacing issues like the right side of the j, which is very tight, but perhaps this is a result of the optical kerning in the test document?
    I’ll prepare a new proof once I’ve fixed these! Thank you for your feedback!
    > I like the idea of developing this into a math font. We could use some more interesting typefaces for math and science texts.
    Definitely agree! It's a pity that we don’t have many interesting typefaces for mathematics.

    @.jeremy tribby
    > in H, the symmetrical curve inward of vertical strokes toward the crossbar sort of imply an interior roundedness that I don't feel so strongly in other uppercase vertical strokes such as F and E.
    I’ll revise all relevant capitals so I can watch better for this, thanks for letting me know!
    > and there's also not quite an analogy in the lowercase, which might be causing a little bit of tension. I think if I were trying to work this out I might try to figure out what tool would make sense to construct these letters (even if you might fashion such a tool out of something non-obvious) and do a bit of analog experimentation with it before I lock in the system. preventing a more harmonious version of this typeface from feeling too mechanical might be part of the work ahead (especially on the sans you have planned), but I think you've done a nice job of this already.
    I’ll experiment a bit with this! Agree that this is going to be very tricky for the sans.
    > it's a small thing, but the right sides of g, a, and t, could probably use a couple units less space.
    I’ll fix this too! Right now the kerning is optical, so the rhythm is pretty uneven. I’ll work on preparing an updated proof with fixed spacing : )
    > charming typeface 
    I’m very happy to hear that! Thank you!

    @.Christian Thalmann
    > You’ll need to put in some more work to balance out the color across the typeface. Look at the word academic in the sample: The /a/ are significantly heavier than /c/ and /d/. The word Hundar in the display cut in particular shows that the top of the bowl in /d/ is too light. (I understand the urge to lighten it; it's an awkward joint between two heavy strokes, but you’ve overdone it.)
    Wow, I hadn’t noticed the /a/ being so heavy compared to the rest of the glyphs, but, now that you pointed this out, I find it very easy to see! It’s fascinating how getting used to a design sometimes makes these things hard to notice. I’ll work on balancing colour for the next version : )
    Thank you very much, Christian!
  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 2,092
    I’m not sure whether a bears the blame; the ntifi in scientific looks about equally dark to me. I rather suspect that d and especially c are lighter than the font-wide median. The c might also be too wide?

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