oops pardon the “proportion”......but anyway no one?

— Warning, Non-Type Designer —

You seem to have the right things in mind. Stems and curves are a good thing to watch. WIth the technology as it is today, is it necessary to start a design in this way? It seems to me that you do keep the rudimentary elements in mind still, but can push forward much quicker without having to worry about test characters. Or not?

I think the most important thing -at least concerning Latin caps- is that there are two styles of proportions/widths:
1) The classical style, which has a lot of divergence; like look at the “B” versus the “D” in Trajan.
2) The modern style, where the widths converge a lot; see Spiekermann’s stuff.

As always though there are exceptions, such as Nick Shinn’s Richler.

hhp

Thank you Tiffany & Hrant.

I understand that i need to be creative with my letters and less mechanical. I think that the main obstacle that I have with the serif is:
1. to measure the width with the serif?
2. if not - why not?

but again - I don’t want to be too mechanical or scientific.

right now I’m studying:
1. Galliard + Hoefler text
2. Futura + Bauhaus (to understand the simple geometric shapes)
3. Myriad + Myriad Condensed (to understand what is condensed and to compare it to the regular font)

and the next step:
text vs. display (such as Minion)

and I hope that after that I can start to explore more modern designs.

any thoughts, ideas — you’re welcome.....

I would think that including the serif in measuring the width of a character is the actual, but without the serif is the optical.

Historically, I think designers have typically worked from the elemental structures. On the other hand, since serifs do exist as more than disposable decoration, the apparent width is more important in the end. In fact it’s quite hard -if cozy- to justify reliance on skeletons in type design.

hhp

In fact it’s quite hard -if cozy- to justify reliance on skeletons in type design.

what do you mean? (or do you mean the way Albrecht Dürer tried to build letters - i’m talking about his little book “of the just shaping of letters”)

Designers tend to see letters are skeletons with stuff wrapped around them. I think this is problematic, especially when the structures are chirographic (derived from hand movements), but even when they’re “constructed”. We need to see letters are contributors to notan (the unity/contrast of black/white).

hhp