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Type Battle 21: FontStruct
Posted by Zara Evens in
8 Apr 2008 — 2:47pm
8 Apr 2008 — 2:47pm
Here's your chance to stretch your type muscles on a weekly basis. We are posting a day late, but you still have one week to create and submit your entry. Anyone may submit a design response to the challenge. You may enter as often as you wish. Post anytime. Critiques and comments are welcome throughout the game, from participants and spectators alike. Smack talk is encouraged.
As with any street battle, there is no panel of judges and no prize — only the ability to call yourself the best on the block.
Link directly to this thread: http://www.typophile.com/battle21
// REQUIREMENTS
- Image size: 550 width x 400 height. 72 dpi
- Color: Black and white only
- Format: Please save your graphics as PNG
// THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE:
// Utilizing the free, online font-building tool, FontStruct, complete at a minimum, a lower case typeface that will look great in a paragraph of text. Post your results in the form of a PNG, and include a link to your FontStruction.
Winner take all, no holds barred. May be the best designer win.
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8 Apr 2008 — 6:22pm
Are you allowed to tweak the spacing or add/subtract parts? Fontstruct is awesome but sometimes the loss of a kern is catastrophic. Also serifs ruin spacing with the auto spacing. Regarding spacing/metrics and so on please read:
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/faq/fonts/can_i_control_the_metrics_gener...
8 Apr 2008 — 6:22pm
Ooooh! I'm in! Guaranteed to place last, but in!
8 Apr 2008 — 6:38pm
This has no right side serifs extending except for a few letters like x because it plays merry hell with the spacing.
8 Apr 2008 — 6:54pm
Ooh, Eben, it looks like I'm looking through a microscope at some chromosomes.
8 Apr 2008 — 6:57pm
It needs to get more chromosome-like before I am done. The p needs fixing for instance - lower connection to the stem...
8 Apr 2008 — 7:12pm
Beautiful, Eben. Even nicer than I expected. That really proves that we need to refine FontStruct's gallery widget. Love the way you've used smaller dots to emulate antialiasing.
Joe - get your Punchcut boys in here. They have made some excellent text-worthy FontStructions.
9 Apr 2008 — 7:12am
Hi, long-time lurker here.
Spent most of this weekend trying to do just what the topic ordered.
Take her out for a spin here: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/1967
Ben Townsend Hamm
9 Apr 2008 — 8:41am
Ben, Very Nice!
9 Apr 2008 — 9:44am
You forgot to link to yours, Eben. Here it is.
9 Apr 2008 — 9:47am
Thanks! I improved it a bit last night. It has fancy numbers now & a better "p" among other things. I will post a new image Thursday.
9 Apr 2008 — 9:49am
A spacing workaround: you can add more left sidebearing by leaving grid spaces between your glyph and the left guide. Jordic used this technique on all characters to loosen the spacing on his BB Tempo Extended.
9 Apr 2008 — 11:08am
About time i posted something! Here's my second fontstruction. Too bold for a lot of text, but oh well.
Link: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/6962
9 Apr 2008 — 11:43am
By request, the image size has been changed to 550px in width. This should solve the scrollbar issue.
9 Apr 2008 — 12:17pm
This is Eerostyle
9 Apr 2008 — 1:56pm
"Joe - get your Punchcut boys in here. They have made some excellent text-worthy FontStructions."
And girls!! Punchcut has female employees as well. :)
10 Apr 2008 — 11:27am
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/11154
EDIT: Still tweaking a few things
9 Apr 2008 — 2:33pm
Sorry Molly! Hadn't seen any of the Punchcut girls on FontStruct, but I could be missing someone.
9 Apr 2008 — 2:53pm
i am a girl, stewf and you know I am on FontStruct :(
9 Apr 2008 — 2:55pm
Whoops! And in the top 10 at that! I guess I don't think of Zara as a Punchcutter. Zara is her own entity.
10 Apr 2008 — 5:02am
This is SlabStruct Too, an alternate to SlabStruct. Both inspired by Cholla, but I think Too emulates the model better.
10 Apr 2008 — 5:53am
Okay, let's get in there quick before I get put off by everybody else's masterpieces!
Excuse the quality of the image: I'm on a machine that doesn't have access to Photoshop or anything useful, so that was straight out of FontStruct's preview window and saved through Windows Paint! (ahem...)
I have slightly narrowed the cap S since taking this screen shot.
Link: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/12566
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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster's stopped working.
10 Apr 2008 — 7:57am
I really need to get back to work, so here is my attempt:
It's got several strikes against it in terms of readability as a text face. Most obviously, it's a modern with extreme contrast--so extreme that the horizontal hairlines are merely suggested and not actually connected.
Link: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/12896
Stephen, Eero Saarinen rocks! And so does Eerostyle--it really seems inspired by Saarinen's work. I'm impressed with everyone's work so far.
10 Apr 2008 — 10:28am
I NEED TO FIND OUT IF ANY OF YOU HAVE THE "NEW" FREE SCRIPT FONT THE NAME IS "FREE SCRIPT".......IT IS VERY EXPENSIVE AND RIGHT NOW I AM CURRENTLY A STUDENT SEEKING A GRAPHIC DESIGNER'S CAREER......I WOULD DEEPLY APPRECIATE IT.....I LOVE THAT FONT........
THANK YOU AND HAVE A GREAT DAY!!
MEGANHILL
10 Apr 2008 — 10:34am
Excuse the quality of the image: I’m on a machine that doesn’t have access to Photoshop or anything useful, so that was straight out of FontStruct’s preview window and saved through Windows Paint!
Hey, clever trick - that fuzziness really helps iron out one's diagonals! :-)
But seriously, Ubiety works really well! Good job, dtw.
10 Apr 2008 — 10:50am
Megan,
This isn't the proper thread to be asking those kinds of questions. Please read the FAQ on Free Fonts:
http://typophile.com/node/14652
10 Apr 2008 — 11:02am
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/avenida
10 Apr 2008 — 1:51pm
Hammer+Sickler
Permalink: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/12159
Transliterated lyrics from the former Soviet National Anthem.
Note: The lowercase, punctuation and figures are, um, teh suk right now so ignore those.
10 Apr 2008 — 3:40pm
I'm sort of liking how chunky and imperfect this is, in a Rodchenko poster kind of way. (All or most of Rodchenko's lettering was hand-drawn). But this still has some trouble spots, like the weight of horizontal strokes in the E don't match some of the others.
I think the A needs to descent below the baseline, like the Cyrillic D, what do you think?
10 Apr 2008 — 4:46pm
That is truly awesome, I can see it now screenprinted on funky posters in limited edition runs, appearing in images on the web held up by designer's fingers. I haven't had the chance to look at the tool yet but I'm impressed with everybody's efforts.
10 Apr 2008 — 10:00pm
Here's another one:
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/bubblewrap
This came out very much like a bitmap font, but with rounded corners. I can't seem to figure out how to control the width of the space. It came out very narrow, so I had to type two in a row to get an acceptable width when I set the sample in Photoshop.
11 Apr 2008 — 1:15am
Very nice Mark. By the way, sorry I missed your visit to SF. I was home with a sick 5 year old.
11 Apr 2008 — 1:23am
"Hey, clever trick - that fuzziness really helps iron out one’s diagonals! :-)"
...Good point, Eliason. Yeah, sorry about that. Sort of. :-D
Still like Eben's dotted font: kinda reminiscent of Rian Hughes' Monitor but more readable without having to stand well back.
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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster's stopped working.
11 Apr 2008 — 5:53am
@Joe: Likewise. Sorry to have missed you.
11 Apr 2008 — 8:57am
ruD
{Edit: forgot to link you up! Leiria is here.}
11 Apr 2008 — 8:55am
Mmmm, now that works.
11 Apr 2008 — 10:08am
Here's my ever-so-cruddy contribution to this thread. I'm not going to vouch for anything about it other than that I had a tonne of fun making it! Oh, and having used the mighty Windoze paint to create the PNG, the anti-aliasing is screwed up. Best bet is to look at the original.
You can find the original here.
11 Apr 2008 — 10:17am
ruben: THAT IS AWESOME! I knew mine was crap but I didn't know just how crap it was until I saw yours...
11 Apr 2008 — 11:02am
Oops… I meant «… worked OUT great!» Damned typos! :D
Thank you very much, metalfoot. :)
ruD
11 Apr 2008 — 11:15am
Eben's is quite good, and the effect that you get with Joe Pemberton's kicks ass. I'm hoping to see something created on Fontstruct that may become the new Helvetica or the new Caslon… xD
No, serious. I'd really like that.
ruD
11 Apr 2008 — 12:04pm
Joe, that design is brutal!
11 Apr 2008 — 12:37pm
Ruben - love your ampersand and especially your asterisk!
11 Apr 2008 — 1:35pm
Usually when I hear brutal in reference to design it means you're bleeding out of your eyes. Can you clarify? =)
11 Apr 2008 — 1:54pm
I'd not tried setting Struktur in a paragraph yet, and this reminded me of how much FontStruct needs some metrics control. I added a few ligatures to help with some of the spacing issues (and for extra coolness factor!). Stewf, the left sidebearing trick only works in the FontStruct preview, not in the actually font, unfortunately.
11 Apr 2008 — 2:57pm
:)
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/2483
13 Apr 2008 — 6:01pm
5char
-=®=-
11 Apr 2008 — 7:05pm
Hooray!
The name will probably change; I was running short on creativity.
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/13136
Edit: apparently I forgot to turn off spell-check. Oh, well.
12 Apr 2008 — 4:19am
Just noticing how a lot of sets look flawless in paragraph (Eric's, Dmitry's and Ruben's just to mention the last ones), a thing you can't tell just by examining the fonts in FontStruct display.
Really surprised by what I'm seeing here! Bravo to all!
12 Apr 2008 — 9:14am
I will have to get my revisions down & set a new proper sort of paragraph to see how it compares. This has been a good type battle. I think Rueben's design might make a nice "real" outline font - in the right hands. It has a lovely ampersand.
12 Apr 2008 — 10:24am
*crossing my fingers hoping I've got the right hands*
I've been considering that, Eben. Do you think it should completely echo what it looks like on this level or do you think it should have quirks of its own on the outline level, when there's a lot more "pixels" to fill?
I've been thinking: is there a way to embed bitmap fonts onto a regular font? Because I'd like to be able to control hinting on regular outline faces the way you'd make a pixel font and make different typefaces altogether for different screen sizes that would be embedded into the original outline font file…
Oh, and thanks! To Em42 and eliason, too. :)
ruD
12 Apr 2008 — 10:41am
Eben's and Ruben's are magical, I've gotta say.