Typophile - THE Observer's Book of Mad Roman Emperors - Comments

Ray’s score. 1) Pyke’s

James Arboghast — Wed, 7 May 2008 06:33:23 -0700

Ray’s score.

1) Pyke’s Peak is named after the mountain with the volcano on South Park is good answer.

2) To give credence to the word “Arboghastian” is the answer I was hoping for.

3) Looking at these Pykie type samples makes you feel Sharp & Furry is the answer I was hoping for.

4) “Without Googling: 12 minutes, 21 seconds.” is a good guess and close to the ’correct’ answer. According to Wikipedia the all-time record is 10:01.408, set by Nobuhiro Tajima “in a Suzuki XL7 Hill Climb Special while racing the Unlimited category. He beat the previous record set by Rod Millen set 13 years before in 1994 of 10:04.06. “

5) James Pike was the Episcopal bishop of California.

6) Bishop James Pike officiated at the wedding of Nancy Hackett to Philip K. Dick. But the image of L. Ron Hubbard as a highly-respected sci-fi writer is suitably comical.

7) Backwards-facing capital letters are “Fascinating but I’m glad I’m not having lunch with them” is a good answer. I was plumping for the time scoop theory.

8) The System of Professor Tar & Doctor Feather is a good answer, but I prefer to think of it as Trippy rub-down Arcadian magic.

9) Three kinds of material you would use Pyke’s Peak on.

A spider’s carapace
Cigarettes
Paper stolen from a photocopier

All good answers man.

10) True of false? A copy of Pyke’s Peak will be gifted to Typophiles who submit the most candid and original answers. “Somewhat true.”

Aw heck, it was a trick question, and a dumb one at that.

j a m e s

1) Pyke’s Peak is named

typodermic — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:01:40 -0700

1) Pyke’s Peak is named after which well-known mountain in the Colorado Rockies?

The one with the volcano on South Park.

2) Pyke’s Peak sports a bristling array of glyph types & letter structures. Forms include phantoms, dot phantoms, mirror glyphs, fitted pairs and superposed ligatures (ligs formed by letters eating into & growing out of each other.) The question is, w h y ?
a) To keep designers off the streets
b) To create an enigmatic type effect reminiscent of hand-lettering
c) To give credence to the word “Arboghastian”
d) To create a big scary opentype monster

c - obviously

3) Looking at these Pykie type samples makes you feel—-
a) Excited
b) Strange
c) Sharp & furry
c) By degrees terrified

4) There is an annual race up Pike’s Peak mountain in a special breed of supercharged cars known as Pike’s Peak racers. What’s the all-time record for getting to the top?

Without Googling: 12 minutes, 21 seconds.

5) James Pike was the Episcopal bishop of which Diocese?

The little-known Ultramormons (top secret)

6) Bishop James Pike officiated at the wedding of Nancy Hackett to which highly-regarded American science fiction writer? Clue—-he lived in Oakland, California. No really.

L. Ron Hubbard?

7) Backwards-facing capital letters are—-
a) Capitals that fell into a time mirror in ancient Roma and came out on our side reversed
b) A neat-if-vexing method of solving certain kinds of ligatures, eg: Em, EE, ER, RB etc.
c) Fascinating but I’m glad I’m not having lunch with them
d) Too disturbing even for pretend consideration

8) Which one-liner best describes Pyke’s Peak?
a) Cryptomagmous barking-mad bannana fritters
b) The work of several seditious scribes from Ceaserea
c) Trippy rub-down Arcadian magic
d) The System of Professor Tar & Doctor Feather

9) Name three kinds of material you would use Pyke’s Peak on.

A spider’s carapace
Cigarettes
Paper stolen from a photocopier

10) True of false? A copy of Pyke’s Peak will be gifted to Typophiles who submit the most candid and original answers.

Somewhat true.

It l o o k s like a j

James Arboghast — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:58:19 -0700

It l o o k s like a j doesn’t it? Makes you wonder.

Hey Brian. Yes w-W are a legiblity challenge but users can replace all instances of w, e and g with non-gapped alternates all at once by turning on the CALT feature. The CALT character set includes a normal s too.

That dot phantom EM lig is a second variety. Default E, including all ligs and mirror ligs, has the stroke. And for people who are getting really bored there’s the cursive E, which I made out of the B. I tried to think of everything.

Keep coming with the feedback. The glyphs are finalized but it’s still good to get opinions.

j a m e s

What a wonderful piece of

aszszelp — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:01:24 -0700

What a wonderful piece of art! How skillful!

((sometimes I have hard times reading the lowercase w (and slightly also the uppercase version) because of its disjoint left stroke; similar to the EE ligature, if the left side had just a dot instead of the stroke, like all other mirrored E’s I’ve seen, it might be easier. But you have finished your glyphs and are only working on kerning, so I’ll shut up.))

Wow, that was a j - before

eeblet — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:31:22 -0700

Wow, that was a j - before the scroll-down. I thought maybe he had smeared Twinkies all over himself.

—-
eeblet.com

Hee! I like me the Budwig.

James Arboghast — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:13:51 -0700

Hee! I like me the Budwig. Don’t pay no mind of pointy diagonals. Take as much time as you need with the quiz. Meanwhile, here’s a vizzy to de-pique your frazziness. I give you, smoking kid—-

j a m e s

You’ve picqued my

eeblet — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:00:37 -0700

You’ve picqued my interested with this quiz... it’s taking me a while to answer it because I’m peaked. I took a peek at a certain wikipedia page, though.

I’d write the name of the mountain, but I’m concerned about the suicidal nature of the third letter in the name.

—-
eeblet.com

After looking at the

James Arboghast — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:08:48 -0700

After looking at the pixtures in your Flickr photostream I can see why you appreciate the mirror ligs Beth. You’re just the kind of designer I’m looking for to be a Pyke’s Peak owner.

Here’s a quiz. I’m looking for candid and original answers. You’ve already won a copy of the font, but do the quiz anyway :^)

Pyke’s Peak Quiz
1) Pyke’s Peak is named after which well-known mountain in the Colorado Rockies?

3) Looking at these Pykie type samples makes you feel—-
a) Excited
b) Strange
c) Sharp & furry
c) By degrees terrified

4) There is an annual race up Pike’s Peak mountain in a special breed of supercharged cars known as Pike’s Peak racers. What’s the all-time record for getting to the top?

5) James Pike was the Episcopal bishop of which Diocese?

6) Bishop James Pike officiated at the wedding of Nancy Hackett to which highly-regarded American science fiction writer? Clue—-he lived in Oakland, California. No really.

9) Name three kinds of material you would use Pyke’s Peak on.

10) True of false? A copy of Pyke’s Peak will be gifted to Typophiles who submit the most candid and original answers.

j a m e s

WOW - I love those mirror

eeblet — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:37:36 -0700

WOW - I love those mirror ligs. Wow wow wow. (Hmmm, I wonder how many designers will invent a project as an excuse to use this face....)

—-
eeblet.com

It’s a bit of a scary

James Arboghast — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:34:48 -0700

It’s a bit of a scary bear, old Pykie needs lots of tender loving kerning. Creating kerning pairs in the font for all possible combinations—-even half of them—-creates a class-based proliferation reaching into tens of thousands pairs. Users will have to manually kern in some situations.

Pyke’s Peak requires its users to be lettering artists. You could say it’s a demanding font.

What the capitals get up to:

Mirror-pair ligs:

More craziness:

Digital letraset:

j a m e s

Sounds like a winner! and

dezcom — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:29:35 -0700

Sounds like a winner! and different than the average bear.

ChrisL

Cheers guys. This font is

James Arboghast — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:49:03 -0700

Cheers guys. This font is plenty heap ’o fun. It’s a Roman inscriptional kind of thing, but not inscribed as such. A synthetic technical pen tool is the basis for the stroke design and finish.

It has Ar’deco-influenced Trajanesque capitals with several twists, quite a few phantom letters, a wacky lower case, and a contextual alternates feature that swaps in a more text-friendly (read: more readable) character set.

What else? Oh, a proper Lining Numbers feature: turn on the lining numeral set and all the math and currency symbols are positioned to suit. Luxury! What else? A supporting cast of 590 extras—-stacks of stylistic alternates and a staggering array of ligatures. Some of the ligature pairs are fitted like the THE word lig.

I’ve completed testing all the OT features, and now I’m finishing kerning.

j a m e s

Now that looks like

dezcom — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:43:15 -0700

Now that looks like fun!

ChrisL

¡ hail !

AGL — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:35:12 -0700

¡ hail !

THE Observer's Book of Mad Roman Emperors

James Arboghast — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:21:35 -0700

It's THE book, according to the title. THE book of mad roman emperors. [img:mademperors_5520.gif] As you can see this is a barking mad font I'm working on. Bar-bark, woof. j a m e s