Cormorant Cyrillic Review

I am not pursuing a historically accurate revival, and I find the historically appropriate trapezoidal forms quite ungainly. 

Made a drop-terminal version of У and small-caps у for the default cut. The Garamond cut retains the «stainless steel murderspider» look, as orthoxerox called it.

I'm rather surprised at the tear-shaped central descenders. Shouldn't they match the lateral descenders in Ц etc.? This seems to be the case in many other typefaces.

It is absolutely fine if you don't pursue a historical revival. The main problem as I see it is that you are mixing in Garamond, Bodoni, and Trajan. In Cyrillic you need to stick to one convention — per stylistic set in your case :)

I like how the new terminals in Уу relate to Лл.

The Лл represents a modern Didone shape, while /б is an old-fashioned Garamond. 

For a classist feel I recommend extending the terminal in У below the baseline.

Here is a sample from Trajan with an extended У.

This "Trajan-style" У is fine, and requires a different solution for Лл, which you provided.

I see a problem with У and у. The lowercase design needs to be adjusted as well.  

 Your updated Яя looks good. 

I really don't understand this issue. As far as I can tell, I'm faithfully adhering to the architecture of the Bodoni approach with my default cut of ЛлДд (thin stem starts vertical and curves out into a ball terminal, proportions match). The only differences I see are the obvious ones due to the different stress and contrast in Cormorant. I certainly can't have hairlines everywhere like Bodoni, or super-curled terminals. 

I also strongly dislike the boneless diagonals of the traditional Garamond.

The lowercase /у does not look good.

The left /б is good. The Bold one is falling to the left. 

I really don't understand this issue. As far as I can tell, I'm faithfully adhering to the architecture of the Bodoni approach with my default cut of ЛлДд (thin stem starts vertical and curves out into a ball terminal, proportions match). The only differences I see are the obvious ones due to the different stress and contrast in Cormorant. I certainly can't have hairlines everywhere like Bodoni, or super-curled terminals. 

To my native eyes a mix of two different conventions looks inappropriate, and distracting. Compare the amount of white in /а and /л. It does not feel right, because it isn't backed up by tradition. The 'boneless diagonals' are called trapeziodal, and are traditional for broad-nib structure. I do advise trying out this solution.

I also strongly dislike the boneless diagonals of the traditional Garamond.

You can't dislike them before you try them.

Based on your previous suggestions, I chose «Trajan» as the style for Cormorant Garamond and «Bodoni» for Cormorant. In that context, a Bodoni-style shape for /л seems appropriate. Are you now saying that Bodoni-style shapes were never an option because my font is humanist in nature...?

This would probably work too. I need to check in text. 

I am already confused what you mean by Bodoni-cut, Garamond-cut, etc. I don't think you can mix Bodoni and Garamond in one style and get away with it.

To my eyes /л and /д look wrong. I am used to  seeing them much narrower with a trapezoid top.

Compare the amount of white in the counters. 

Could I salvage those лд by using the /a/e from .ss02, which have larger apertures? Or are there many more letters in the current Cormorant lowercase that would need to be changed to fit Bodoni-style лд?

Judging from the Google Fonts usage stats, Cormorant Garamond seems much more popular on Russian sites than Cormorant, so the triangular bodies really seem to work. Maybe changing the trapezoids in the regular Cormorant will help it catch up.  :)

Descenders of ц: I guess that should be propagated to all similar descenders?

Hi Alexei, thanks for the feedback!  Questions:

— /ustrait-cy: I made the serif on the descender to match /p/q. What would you suggest instead? A horizontal serif? Something else?

— «Slightly bring in the left shoulder.» Not sure what exactly you mean. Should the whole bottom left structure be nudged to the right, making the glyph narrower? Only the descender? Only the sloping thin stem?

— I don't have precedent for the /gheupturn-cy; it just made the most sense to me like that. The curved bottom left instroke doesn't make much sense in humanist pen logic. I guess I'll use a plain sans stem foot, then.

— /ghemiddlehook-cy, /gestrokehook-cy: If I just slant the Roman form, the serifs will look very out of place in the Italics... I'll try to figure something out.

I really hate those slanted /ge derivatives. Any suggestions on how to improve them? Or should I just accept that they're hideous...?

in ж you need to retract the two c-shaped forms 15 units inwards. So the widths of ж and ш become similar. 

Thank you for your work Christian, well done. I recommend Cormorant Cyrillic among GF best examples.