Typophile - Ledbury - Comments

This is admirably

George Horton — Wed, 9 Nov 2005 18:28:23 -0800

This is admirably successful: very ugly and very readable.
Head and bottom serifs on b,i,u etc in the roman lowercase are too concave. Reducing bracketing on the serifs such that brackets do not reach the ends of the serifs would give the face a touch of severe elegance. Think how x might be improved, for instance.

a: consider lowering the upper part of the bowl, at the join especially, such that it is possible to give more definition to the ball-terminal without diminishing the optical size of the aperture.
e: reduce counter by thickening at top left.
f, t: thicken bars.
g: too beautiful for the rest of the face. Or consider altering bdpq to fit g (and also to fit O and Q). That is the route I should prefer.
o: too light.
s: too broad, and the serifs are lifeless.
y: Lighten crotch.
z: serifs are lifeless.

All your thins in the Roman caps need thickening, as it is, they cause slight refocussing in reading to accomodate their greater dazzle (with plain letterforms, colour must be very carefully standardised). Lighter brackets would also especially benefit the caps.
B: Pull the upper bowl inwards and/or reproportion to reduce the relative size of the upper bowl. Consider shaping the central join by having it curve with the lower bowl.
M: drop or otherwise darken the central meeting point.
S has the same problems which s does, and consider leaning it rightwards minimally.
O and Q: too beautiful for the rest of the face, unless the rest of the face is changed instead.

Italic:
b: darken bottom of stem.
k, z: thins are too thin.
p, q: consider regularising the descenders’ serifs to horizantals, each a little longer under the bowl.

Hope this helps,
George

Here is an update, showing

Glyn Adgie — Sun, 4 Sep 2005 11:25:19 -0700

Here is an update, showing italics in line with roman. Regarding the apparent ascender or x height mismatch, I found small error in the ascender serif slope, which might make the ascenders look short. Also, the hinting error I mentioned earlier might possibly have expanded the x height, by affecting the rendering of baseline overshoots in a different way to the roman.

The italic offset has been set roughly according to the guidelines suggested by Mark Simonson and Thomas Phinney in reply to a question I posted in Build. I have set the alignment point at about 55% of the x height. This was just a convenient number for the purpose of quickly updating all the glyphs and construction guides.

William, I just checked the

Glyn Adgie — Sat, 3 Sep 2005 21:39:02 -0700

William, I just checked the x height and ascenders, in case I had made a mistake. It looks like I have made the italic ascenders except ’f’ a hair short compared to the roman. There is only two font units difference, but perhaps this being amplified by rounding effects in rendering. The x height is the same, with the same overshoots.

I recall reading somewhere, almost certainly on Typophile, that an optical correction for apparent height is sometimes applied to italics, but I cannot recall the details.

I will be in a position to do a sample with in line italics shortly, after I have done the leftward offset of the italics. This sample should show if there are any real problems.

The first thing that strikes

William Berkson — Sat, 3 Sep 2005 08:31:19 -0700

The first thing that strikes me about the italic is that the ascenders apprear too short compared to the Roman. The x-height may be too high also, but you will find out testing them in line with one another.

Just noticed a hinting

Glyn Adgie — Fri, 2 Sep 2005 13:46:14 -0700

Just noticed a hinting error, which causes severe distortion/trunction of the descenders. Should be OK for print, I hope.

This update should, I hope,

Glyn Adgie — Fri, 2 Sep 2005 04:24:48 -0700

This update should, I hope, fix the worst of the spacing problems, or at least prod things in the right direction. I am still working on various letter shapes. I am wondering whether to lift the bottom of the arch of the ’y’ a bit, or maybe tinker with the descender, as the top counter looks too big to me.

www.adgie.f9.co.uk/typophile/Ledbury-Ital2.pdf

Looks fine (except the

hrant — Thu, 1 Sep 2005 08:32:52 -0700

Looks fine (except the spacing).
Only the “s” is off: make it narrower, and maybe more “wound-up”.

BTW, the bowl of the Roman “a” is a bit too ample.

hhp

Here is Ledbury Italic, with

Glyn Adgie — Thu, 1 Sep 2005 02:32:23 -0700

Here is Ledbury Italic, with just the lower case done at the moment.

www.adgie.f9.co.uk/typophile/Ledbury-Ital1.pdf

Why dangerous? I try to

Glyn Adgie — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 13:27:48 -0700

Why dangerous? I try to criticise long-standing designs, to see if things can be done better, so I am not saying that the traditional forms are set in concrete. I suppose I am being a cynical old engineer: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Regarding the spacing of italics: knowing that the different decorations from the roman would affect this on straights, I started with the assumption that at least the round sidebearings would be the same, and tinkered with the serif length until the straight sidebearings looked right relative to this. Ledbury roman has rather short serifs, and I wanted to preserve that idea in the italic. This worked fine at larger sizes, but a 10 point print just looked far too tight. My point about some other italic fonts being loosely spaced was based on Minion Pro Italic, which appears to be much more loosely spaced than the roman. This is not the case with the Bitstream fonts.

On the colour thing: I have not lightened the italic by much, the main straight stem width is about 95% of the roman. Same goes for the width: it is only a bit narrower in general. I am trying to avoid a thin spidery look here, while providing the expected style contrast.

I have not posted any samples of the italic, as it really is in a state of flux. It is mostly conventional in style at the moment, which is good for test purposes, but I think I can work in more adventurous stuff than I managed in the roman.

> it would widen the word

hrant — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 11:02:31 -0700

> it would widen the word space in front of initial caps.

Add space-UC negative pairs? You’d need a lot fewer than kerning all UC-UC pairs.

> italics: should the spacing (rounds and main stems) be looser than the roman?

Well, generally italics have lighter color. Looseness is one way of getting to that, but I personally don’t like that idea.

—

Studying/following precedent: it’s a two edged sword, or like an addiction. The more you do it, the more you have to remind yourself it can be dangerous.

hhp

Just an a few remarks about

Glyn Adgie — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 03:27:37 -0700

Just an a few remarks about Hrant’s earlier comment that Ledbury looks like a distillation of a stylistic category. I think I know why this has happened.

As a self-teaching aid, I have several other fonts on my system open in Fontforge, while I am working on my own. At the moment, I am looking at New Baskerville, Garamond, Aldine721, (all from a Bitstream collection that came with Wordperfect), and Adobe Minion Pro, that came with Acrobat Reader. I then look at things like proportions, stem widths, and decorations, and decide where I want my design to be placed, e.g. darker than this, but not as dark as that, or slightly bigger x height than most, and so on. I also look at the things in other designs I do not like, and try to ’fix’ them, or adopt (but not copy) features from other designs that I like. This no doubt has the effect of making my design a sort of average, where I have not been confident enough in my own judgements.

I am hoping that I will get more confidence as I go along, so I can base new work more on my own efforts, rather than always comparing my designs to others.

Anyway, I am wondering what more experienced, and formally qualified, designers think about the benefits and drawbacks of detailed study and criticism of long-standing designs. My own feelings are that this rather old-fashioned learning process helps build technique and judgement, and that self-expression needs to wait on learning the basics, or it will result in naive and primitive work.

Here is my latest update:

Glyn Adgie — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 02:23:39 -0700

Here is my latest update: www.adgie.f9.co.uk/typophile/Ledbury4.pdf

This (I hope) fixes all the dodgy contours and proportions mentioned above. Blob terminations have been added to ’J’ and ’j’. They look more positive now. The tail of ’Q’ has been reshaped, to lighten the joint and make a more definite curve.

I have tightened all the capital straight sidebearings, but I have not offset the caps as discussed with Hrant.

Hrant, I have considered

Glyn Adgie — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 01:19:27 -0700

Hrant, I have considered doing just that at various times. One problem I can see is that it would widen the word space in front of initial caps. Not too bad for sentence breaks, maybe even beneficial, but would it make things like proper names embedded in sentences look wrong?

By the way, Hrant, I would have posted my reply and some remedial updates on Saturday, but I could not access the forums due to some Typophile server problem over the weekend. In the meantime, I have started the italics. My first test printout and studying other fonts raised a question about spacing (conventional) italics: should the spacing (rounds and main stems) be looser than the roman?

Hmmm, what about this idea

hrant — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 17:35:08 -0700

Hmmm, what about this idea for spacing caps:
Give them more left than right sidebearings.
Crazy?

hhp

Carl, thanks for your

Glyn Adgie — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:57:44 -0700

Carl, thanks for your remarks about the warmth and humanism. This is precisely the feel I was going for.

I can see your point about about expecting some tightness in all caps if the cap spacing is determined by working as initials for the lower case. I will tighten up the straight sidebearings, as I had thought I should. Opentype cleverness apart, it would seem to be normal practice for typesetters to loosen all cap spacing anyway, so perhaps overtight all caps are not really a problem.

Regarding the weight distribution in the lower bowl of ’g’, the weak bit from my point of view is the bottom left, which does not do justice to the top part. With the top part, I was going for a gradual flare out to the right corner, followed by an s-like reduction to minimum width around the bottom right. After that, I must admit I was unsure what should happen next. As I have said before, I think I need to be really careful about knocking this letter into shape, for fear of subduing its character. Much of the conventional nature of Ledbury has, I think, come about from knocking off the rough edges for the sake of functionality.

Ledbury

Glyn Adgie — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 04:10:41 -0700

This is (more or less) my first attempt at a serif typeface. Any comments and criticisms would be most welcome.