quite nice. the ’y’ and ’f’ specifically seem like they could use some kind of terminal.

Thanks.

You are right, they need a terminal too.

I wonder why nobody’s reacted to this - it’s quite nice I think.

First of all: those white overlaps are distracting.
Please make a normal version.

I’d pull in the descenders.

Just the lc for now:
“b”: Really really nice.
“f”: Extend the right side of the foot serif.
“g”: Quite nice. The head-bottom gap could be wider, and the ear longer.
“k”: Bring the lower leg forward (partly to relieve the weight in the join).
“r”: Same as “f”.
“s”: Slightly dark.
“t”: Extend rightward.
“u”: Make top serifs leftward only. When you do, make the whole narrower.
eszet: Clotting at the bottom.
long-s: Same as “f”.

One last thing: Underware’s Sauna (I think) was
initially called Sofa - and I remember they had
to change the name for legal reasons. You might
have to do the same maybe. Just don’t change it
to Sauna though. ;-)

hhp

sebilar, to merge paths:
select all the characters you want your change to effect
go to contour>transform>merge countours

i suggest before doing this you put a copy of your characters in the mask layer. you can do this by going to
Tools>Mask>Copy outline to mask

there are also keyboard shortcuts for these actions that are quite helpful. these will show up to the right of the command in the drop down menus.

i hope this helps!

btw, very nice work! it looks lovely.

Thanks a lot for your help and your nice words, hrant and paul.

There is a new version attached, with some changes made from your feedback. I think I can also revise some of the uppercase with hrant’s comments. Partially, this is already done as well (F, P – but not too consistent yet).
In the meantime, I also have done some more glyphs and diacritics, which are included in v08 as well.

Today I did the first printout on a 600dpi laser-printer (bad quality, but best I can get at the moment...), and the results in small text-sizes are surprisingly well already. The spacing is still done with indd cs2 optical spacing, but if I can get this done with metrics, I would be quite content already.

I also did merge the paths in this version (thanks for that – Terra Nova would have been much more easy knowing that... but I learn :).
The only things still overlapping are about 10 composited glyphs like oslash, were I can’t merge without decompose them.

What do you think is the best method to go on? Get near perfection with the basic glyphs first, or start things like smallcaps or lowercase figures already?

And maybe I should do three-quarter figures instead of lowercase and lining figures in this face... I don’t know yet.

On the naming: Maybe I will call it ... Sauna ... for changing it again because of legal issues ;-) Thanks for the tip, I did not know that.

sebilar

now i can see to critique!
a few things:
B seems a tad wide
C looks like it had a bit of an overbite (as does the G)
F seems too wide
J tail looks too heavy
K top bar is too long, bottom bar too stiff
L a bit wide
M looks a bit wonky over all would look better if the midpoint came to the baseline
P the bowl could be a bit larger
Q the tail could be stronger
R the bowl could be larger and the leg is too stiff

b could do without the tail
g the join could be smoother
j tail seems too heavy
k the arms are too angular
q could use a quiter ear
r i’ll let hrant address
y the tail feels out of joint
fi and fl ligs seem too wide

2 looks like it’s leaning right
4 could do without the serif on the horizontal
5 has an underbite
7 too wide/leaning right

currency symbols: i’d try to harmonize these. i would work towards forms that fit within the same character width, making Euro and yen narrower.

I like the diacritics, the bar on the Lslash could extend further into the character

“a”: Bottom-left curve malformed.
“r”: Beak too long.
“y”: Terminal awkward.
“D”: Stem seems too much thinner compared to curve.
“K”: Slightly dark.
“L”: Too wide.
“M”: Too narrow.
“Q”: Could work! But give the tail a better finish.
“T”: Too wide.
“U”: Too narrow.
“Y”: Head slightly too small.
Thorn: Too small.

End-of-time, sorry.

Numerals: I’m thinking lining nums might work best here. And since your caps are pretty short, I would align them to the caps. Alternate figures if provided might then be hybrids.

hhp

Thanks for your detailed feedback, and thanks for putting this on the startpage, I’m feeling honoured :)

There is a new version V10 attached, with detail correction based on your comments.

uppercase:

- narrower “B”
- “C” and “G” overbite corrected
- more even “D”
- narrower “F”
- Tail of “J” thinner
- corrected “K” (not sure about that yet, as well as with the “R”)
- narrower “L”
- down-to-bottom and wider “M”
- bigger bowl of “P”
- new tail on the “Q”
- minor changes to “S”
- narrower “T”
- wider “U”
- what do you think about the “W”? should it be analogous to “M”?
- bigger head of “Y”
- bigger “Thorn”

lowercase:

- “a”: I did not quite understand what you meant that, hrant. Tried something...
- alternate form for “b” without tail (not sure which to use, i like both of them)
- what do you think about the alternate form of the “e”? It’s the older one, and i like the new one with the “edge”, but I’m not sure.
- alternate form for the “g” (smoother loop, but not perfect yet).
- thinner tail of “j”
- small changes to “k”
- alternate form for “q” (like with “b”)
- shorter right part of the “r” (not short enough yet?)
- “s” lighter
- “y”: not sure what you meant, hrant and paul. Tried some things again...
- “sz”: still cluttered... don’t know how to solve that yet.
- “thorn”: is it correct to have it the height of ascender?
- fi- and fl-lig: In old versions i tried to keep the metrics of “f” and “i”, and “f” and “l”. Now they are narrower.

figures:

- better “2”
- no changes on “4” yet, but I think you ar right with the horzontal bar
- “5” no underbite anymore, but maybe too much?
- “7” more upwards now

You are right, hrant, I will provide hybrid-figures as alternates.

others:

- “asciitilde” too small
- no changes on currency symbols yet, but you are right paul, they should be equal width
- “Lslash”: longer bar

Thanks a lot for your feedback, without it, this would take much more time and trial and error. Towards most of the things you said, my reaction was “This is quite obvious, why didn’t I see this?”. typophile is great :)

sebilar

“M”: Still slightly narrow; armpits need declotting.
“W”: I think it’s fine.
“g”: lowest curve too thick.
“y”: Just don’t make it curl back so much.
eszet: First get rid of that serif stub - don’t be afraid,
the Internal Consistency Gestapo are all huff&puff.
And then you might possibly even get rid of that last
terminal serif.
thorn: The ascender/descender disproportion is buggin’ ya, eh? :-)
Well, if you want to really push things, make not only its ascender
shorter, but also those of some other letters...

Alternates:
“b” and “q”: Good as alternates.
“e”: May be better than the original.
“g”: Too clotted in the join.

> I did not quite understand what you meant

The curve seems wobbly at the bottom-leftmost.

> not short enough yet?

Nope.

hhp

So, V11 is attached now...

Made the changes you proposed, hrant (M, g, y, eszet, a, r).

thorn: No changes yet (don’t like it, so i ignore it...). What would be other characters that need to be modified? Or would it be a general ascender-change?

alternate g: No changes yet.

Euro and yen: narrowed, but they are not unicase to Dollar but still wider.

New glyphs: More currencies, mu, logicalnot, greater/lesser, braces (not very good yet), paragraph sign, Et, at, percent (bad), superior figures (experimental, maybe too thin yet, as found out with percent fiasco...)

greetings from cold cold Austria
Sebilar

Not a general ascender change. I might make one or more of the “b”, “d” or especially the “el” shorter. Maybe. But really, certainly not on account of the thorn looking funny! It’s such a secondary character (unless you’re Icelandic). I might do it simply to liven things up (not that this font is boring). In which case I’d make some of the descenders shorter too, like the “p” and “q” and maybe the “j”.

I’m only really looking at the alphabetics, but the florin, it’s gotta lean.

hhp

I will certainly try this and check the effect. What amount of change are you talking about? Ten 1000em-units? Fifty? One hundred? I know I have to check this “live”, but it helps me to think in the right dimensions...

I didn’t have much time last week to work on, but now I’ve made a lot more characters in V17:

complete default encoding and Latin Extended A-Diacritics
I don’t have a slight clue whether letter kra (greenlandic small k) is correct (see page 2, black line 3). Some special characters like (C) (R) etc. are not good yet.

f-ligatures, longs-ligatures, and also some discretionary ones
I think especially the discretionary are livening things up when used in display-sizes). I’m not sure about c_r- and g_i-ligs, and I don’t know whether the style of the two alternative c_k-ligs and c_h-ligs (sharp entrance instead of round one) would be better.

smallcaps
with some glitches yet, like too heavy Nsmall

started opentype-coding
ligs, smallcaps

Next step will be to clean up some things and to create better spacing and kerning (the pdf is still kerned with optical setting in Indesign).
I’m also thinking about an italic and bold version, and maybe also about a sans serif one. But last one is far future yet...

What do you think about the “new” name?
Thanks once more for every feedback, especially critical one.

Greetings from Austria,
Sebilar

> What amount of change are you talking about?

Not sure. But at least enough to be noticeable by the layman.

Name: What about Chaise? Or Divan?

hhp

So after weeks of absence (job, private issues) I can update this one (see PDF v24).

There are only details changed, the spacing is done, but must be tweaked in some details yet, kerning not yet. All you can see in the pdf is metric-setting in indesign, not optical, and spacing is not tweaked afterwards.

Opentype-coding is complete now.

I’ve used the font in some semi-professional works already to test it.
I think it is rather final, but I will for sure give hrant’s suggestion a try (ascender change for living up things more).
I just wanted to give it a final touch, before diversify it again: Things start to become very confusing when working on multiple lines of developement.

Do you see any “no-way” in this font? Otherwise I will try to make it final.

And I’ll have to do some more brainstorming about the name... I like Divan and Canapé, I don’t like Chaise, it sounds strange when used in german talking: Divan and Canapé are known here as well, Chaise is not.
I also like Ottoman. Sounds funny :)

Thanks for your feedback,
sebilar

So let me get this straight:
Nobody at all has anything whatsoever to say about
this face? Like not even the OS numerals, people?!

It seems what used to be the single best
thing about Typophile has wilted away.

hhp

:-)

Hrant calls everyone out.

Here are a few comments on the lc:

Serifs: They are all the same length. This is giving you spacing problems and balance problems. Spacing: wvy etc and Balance: rf.

r: too wide. What about a beak like to be consistent.
t: narrow. I might try the bottom less hooked.
bdqp: you’ll probably need to thin the bowls slightly where they join, like you have on the n
s: the terminals make this very closed. May need to thin the top and bottom so it doesn’t get too dark.
lining numerals: have weight/modulation problems see the 5. 1 is narrow :-) 4. I’m not liking the serif on the end of the arm. It makes an already awkwardly spaced glyph even more so. It’s also narrow.

Consider Ben Keil’s smart generate font robofab script. It creates a duplicate vbf, removes the overlaps, generates the fonts, and deletes the vbf in seconds. Very handy for testing.

http://benkiel.com/typeDesign/

Randy

The extra serif on the 4 bothers me too. And before reading all the comments, I was sure that “obviously deformed or wrong characters are placeholders” referred to the Q. For such a cozy typeface, the Q is rather uncozy. A medium-length, very gently s-curved tail is called for here.

I agree with Cerulean on the Q. Its current form would probably prevent me from buying this typeface, although I otherwise quite like the direction it’s headed.

Thanks for the feedback, and thanks to hrant for startle people up. I have no pretension to feedback, as I can give back so little at the moment...

Here is PDF V25.
I’ve considered your comments, and those I got for Sofa Sans (the ones that are applicable on serif as well). Italic, Sans and Antiqua is is put on ice at the moment, as I want to finish this first.

bdpq: thinned bowels a bit. they were too heavy in print.
g: slightly less weight, based on my printing results.
k: lower part slightly more heavy (printing results).
r: narrower, beak. what do you think about it? first real life feedback was positive.
s: a bit wider and lighter. But I think it’s too gaunt now. Difficult...
t: less hooked, you are absolutly right, this was inconsistent. Maybe I have to open it even more.
u: slightly wider.
vwxy: shorter serifs. goodbye elegance, welcome practice...

Q: You are right, Q was a problem I have ignored yet. there are 4 alternates now. see the image below for details. I like Number 3 in the image best.

ae: smoother now
eth: bigger (based on my printouts, it turned out to be too small)

ring: more weight
breve: more weight

1: redesign
2: a bit wider
4: goodbye serifs... Should I kill the bottom one as well?
5: stroke weight redesigned
6: lighter
9: lighter

Hrant: what were your concerns about OS-numerals?
Randy: Thanks for the Robofab-Link. I try to get this working, but I’m no programming crack, so this could take some time :)

Sebilar

> what were your concerns about OS-numerals?

Their up/down distribution, which is unique. Unique isn’t
necessarily bad (depending not least on how much text the
design is intended for) but Unique does benefit from some
sort of justification (in a craft).

hhp

Hrant, I think you may have misinterpreted the sample on page 3, which shows five os numerals and five lining numerals. Both sets are on the last page. I must admit, though, that the way you saw it does have some intriguing potential. A numeric progression from small to descenders to ascenders would mean that you would get a vague idea of how big a number is with only a glance. That alone wouldn’t necessarily be worth flaunting convention, though.

Oh. Sorry. :-/

> you would get a vague idea of how big a number is

Hadn’t thought of that! Sort of how the visual density of
a glyph in Hangul indicates its grammatical function,
providing an extra layer of information for the reader.

> That alone wouldn’t necessarily be worth flaunting convention, though.

I dunno. The conventional scheme is not only partly arbitrary, but it has problems too, most of all that the overall height position is too low compared to the lc. The old French OS scheme -with 3 and 5 ascending- is better in my view, and readers don’t consciously notice the difference, so it probably has a “subvisible” functional advantage. In addition, one could argue for an acending 2 as well.

See also:
http://typophile.com/node/15443 _
http://typophile.com/node/2253 _
http://typophile.com/node/7701 (Looks like a monologue because anonymous posts have been supressed.)

Numeral design really has superb potential for growth.

hhp

Argh, sorry... my fault.
I will correct this in the next PDF :)

The third Q is definitely better (and suited to the whole).
I would drop the others. Other solutions (like the 2nd), although initially original, have been a little abused recently.

Besides, as a general remark, I think the face would benefit from a general spacing tighten-up. At least the Roman.

V_38:

Lots of finetuning, optical tweaking, kerning, some opentype-scripting, etc.

How do you like the new “4”?
compare it directly to V_25 on Page 9 (black=new, red=old)

New: Smallcaps-Versions of currency symbols and some others. Some of them still have wrong stroke weight though.
Are there any other glyphs left that could need a smallcaps-version too?

Thanks to this thread I’m motivated again. Want to come to an end with it soon, then polish the italic, do a lot of beta-testing, publish it and then getting RICH RICH RICH (or die tryin’ ;-).

I love this so far. It truly is a “cozy” face. It reminds of something Underware would do, actually. I’d certainly purchase this.

Hi Sebastian,

Sorry to take so long to make comments. I have to budget the time I give for online critiques; your fine craftsmanship and thoroughness tell me you intend to develop this fully. Very nice specimen texts as well.

I still see some big kinks in the basic set; with a design like this whose modelling is so subtle, these stand out and snag the eye:

* Center crossbars on EF too short. Serifs in these letters do tend to clash or close up, but see Dante for an example of a successful application of long serifs in these shapes.
* Joint of diagonals of K with vertical very dark and crowded, makes letter look narrow. Rearrange where these strokes meet.
* Some serifs are still much too long; see AVWY and tails of K and R. Conversely, the serifs on C, E, L, T and Z are unnecessarily short.
* The obvious humanist proportions of the lowercase call for corresponding variation in width proportions in the uppercase. Homogenizing the UC widths creates a deadening feel which doesn’t fit the lowercase. See E, F, T (wide) and K, M (narrow). A will look better if the outside serifs are shortened.
* Do the R and K need to have a drooping, bowed leg? Elsewhere in the design, stems seem rigid (in a pleasing way) and these sagging elements seem like they were left out in the sun. Consider reversing the bow, for more pleasing tension.
* The nice tapered serifs and the tapered stems imply a range of contrast that the general stroke weights don’t deliver except in a few letters: d, e, h, r, z. Consider bringing the contrast modeling, with the color benefits it brings, to the rest of the letters. Especially caps like B, D, E, F, G, M, N, O, R, S, W will benefit from some lightening in appropriate spots. Also a, g, k, w and z will improve with some adjustment in contrast. A striking example is how monoline W and S look compared to d and n. Look at S and T together.
* Why does the y have such an emphatic tail? The bend at the end of the stroke is already eye-catching; adding a serif at an abrupt angle makes it inescapable. The angle and density of the serifs on s and S also act as snags to the reader’s eye. Consider at least changing the angle of these.
* Apply the corner-lightening trick more in letters like m, n, u, r. the odd horizontal serifs on those letters add weight at the x-height that is continued in their monoline arches and other serifs like those of vwy. LC a would really improve with some thinning of joints.
* The i-t ligature should be removed: When I read your sample text, it appears exactly to my eye as an f-i ligature. Consider removing other ligatures which distort the components beyond readable recognition: cr, cl, sl. Also consider eliminating ligatures that aren’t necessary; is reading enhanced by an sk ligature? It isn’t strictly an improvement.
* The oldstyle figures look preliminary. Contrast, proportions, shapes, and especially the 4 look thrown together. I realize you’ve put a lot of attention on the 4, but it doesn’t even appear to be from the same font. Not because of the unconventional shape, but because it’s still so monoline, and appears to be leaning and bent. Balance is what it needs. 5 also looks like a transplant from a grotesque sans. Look at other typefaces to get ideas about where to apply weight in the shapes of 2, 5, and 7.
* The weight issue of g can be solved with *redistribution* of weight, rather than simply making it lighter overall. This shape, because of its complexity, needs this kind of modeling anyway, especially in a Slab or Sans design where horizontal stems pile up and make a letter dark. You see this in a, e, g, s, and B.

The spacing in the text samples is very loose, especially considering the narrow space character. Is that text tracked? I think the letters need closer fitting overall. Put two m’s together to see what I mean.

Many of my comments seem to ignore the “program” or “logic” of this design. If there is any rule I think worth following in type design, it is: Rules of logic fall apart more and more as a typeface is realized, and the result should only appear to the untrained observer as if serifs are actually the same, stems are identical, etc. In this design, I see that the sharp serif angle and low contrast are apparent themes. However, where they impede smooth reading or distract the eye, they are only mannerisms.

Other than these comments, I see the potential for this design to be very useful in many settings. It does convey the comfortable quality you intend. Eliminate the few scratchy, lumpy elements, and it will be a chaise worthy of weekly afternoon naps for years to come....

Ooooh, Carl ups the ante. Very nice.

hhp

Wow, thanks a lot for taking the time for this feedback, Carl! These are the details that I missed so far, without knowing where to get them from.

I will need a dictionary to understand everything and and it will take me a lot of time to introduce the improvements beside my job, but this is very appreciated and it will not be forgotten.

Sebastian

Beautiful font!
I’d buy it the minute it was released.

Good job!

—-
Oscar Bjarna
http://analog.sys.is

So version 40 is up (see first post).

There are lots of changes suggested by crossgrove, though not all yet.

I ...

• seriously redesigned the uppercase (serifs, proportions, stroke weight, details)

• made some changes to the lowercase (stroke weight, serif angles, details)
• tried some changes for the figures (I’m not very satisfied with them yet)

Concerning ligatures: The using in small sizes in the sample sheet actually is “wrong” (respectively only for testing the spacing of them). I am aware that they should only be used (with deliberation) for display purposes.

Concerning loose spacing: The sample is not tracked, the setting is that loose at the moment, which might be a relict of even longer serifes. I’m considering to tighten it a bit, though I’m not sure to which extent: in Europe, typographers tend to prefer a bit looser spacing than in America, if my perception is right. I am influenced by that obviously, but anyway, spacing is too loose at the moment.

Concerning program of a font: I am aware of, that one has to leave the path of strict guidelines when giving a design perfection. But as a beginner, this can be dangerous: I’m afraid of getting stuck in small optical changes and lose track of things. This is why I tried to avoid as much of “irrational” tweaks as possible until now, but I know that this keeps me from finishing it. I have to grope my way piece by piece now :)

Thanks for your encouraging and detailed comments. Without this feedback I’d be stuck in this state of work...

Oscar: thanks for your comment, this tells me that I’m not doing this all just to file the whole thing in the end...

I specially like the ornamental/floral works on your homepage (that doesn’t mean that I don’t like the rest...)

Greetings from Austria
Sebastian

Sebastian, I’m glad my comments were useful to you. Sometimes a design gets stuck in a dead end and it’s hard to back it out without a fresh look.

“should only be used (with deliberation) for display purposes”

I hope you are ready for all the horrible things people will do with your font that they shouldn’t.... Stretching, condensing, skewing, outlining, tracking, hitting the “punk” filter in Illustrator.... and of course turning on all ligatures and setting a book. ;)

I see the improvements you’ve made. It’s stronger already. Caps look much more settled. Your work is very subtle and decisive. The spacing, I think, is still too loose for general use, even if the trend is toward loose spacing. This design is somewhat unique in that the serifs are not all equal to stem weights, and there’s a lot of proportionality to the design, so spacing will be very tricky. When that’s done thoughtfully, I’m sure you’ll like it better. If your monitor is big enough, I suggest viewing spacing at 2 very different sizes, such as 16 point and 80 point. Some spacing decisions look right at one size that simply are bad at another. I’m sure you noticed that already.

I like it!

> Sometimes a design gets stuck in a dead end and it’s hard to back it out without a fresh look.

A few months ago I couldn’t believe how some typedesigners could work on several fonts the same time. Now I know why :). That’s why I’m working on a new one (working title “dark chocolate”, sketch-stadium). A very early version can be seen in typebattle#12, and a newer one, if chosen, in typecon exhibition. It’s a pity that it is the least-thought-about one I have to offer...
And I’m even thinking about getting Terra Nova back on track. When looking at that one now, I see about 200.000 improvements to be made :)

> I hope you are ready for all the horrible things people will do with your font that they shouldn’t…

At the moment, I’m arguing with a friend of mine (a graphics designer), because he wanted a bold version of Sofa/Canapé, and used an outline to achieve that, even without asking me to redraw the four glyphs he actually needed... It will be shown about 4*3m in size – Beautiful! :(

> spacing

I’m so shy about that because I’m afraid that it will destroy the kerning time already invested. But that’s my fault, if doing such things before having the letter shapes settled down... Just need some overcoming to get it started.

What I’ve learned is that typedesign is suffering, especially as a beginner :). And what is needed, but understandably rare, is feedback from people who really “know”. Amsterdam, Reading and other schools are far from here, and the decision to go there is not easy, so I’m dependant on friendly people who like to help.

Sebastian

Ulp!

Don’t do any kerning until the shapes and spacing are final! In fact, remove all your kerning (argghhh!) so you can look at just default spacing.

This isn’t so bad; when all the shapes and default spacing are done, you’ll discover much less kerning is necessary. Kerning is just to fix pairs that can’t look good by default spacing, like LT.

“Typedesign is suffering” ; D

So, 13 weeks later, here is the update :)

I’ve been working on Sofa Serif Roman to get it almost finished. To achieve this, I made some detours to a Black and Ultralight version and to the Roman Italic, to explore more about the general shape principles (and of course I proped heavily on Carls comments). This was very useful for me, it made me have a new look at the principles of the design, and I think I could improve the Roman based on that experience. (You can see Black and Ultralight them compared to the roman in the end of the PDF. They are not perfect yet and won’t be until Roman is finished.)

Then I returned to the Roman, and I won’t stop for another typeface until it’s finished. I did a lot of finetuning of proportions, stroke weight and details, and I think now I can say the basic character set is almost finished.
Please be critical and tell me about every minor error you still find! I think there are no major ones anymore, but I’m willing to negotiate ;-)

I’ve completely re-done the metrics. Spacing is finished, kerning is in finetuning and correction phase, and yes Carl, of course you were right: there is less to do now than in my first attempt.

What is still to be done:
- redesign ligatures, swashes, etc.
- check whether smallcaps are too thin (I have the misgiving they are...)
- Kerning of Uppercase<—>Smallcaps
- finetuning of some figures
- have a look at the opentype classes and coding whether it’s still appropriate and complete
- rearrange diacritics

So if you have the time and willing, please concentrate your comments on basic character set (A-Z, Asmall-Zsmall, a-z, 0-9 and basic ASCII characters).
Of course, everything else is apprecialted as well, but know that I’m still working on them, so comments too much into detail may be overtaken by my own corrections anyway... But don’t feel hesitated to comment conceptional things or major mistakes. For example, I don’t know much about diacritics, It’s mainly looking at solutions others have done, but’s I can’t say “now everything is correct”.

Thanks for your help
Sebastian

Short intermezzo: which lig-style do you prefer?

Middle option, I hope you weren’t considering just crashing two letters together as an option.

The middle one. Although it might be worth trying an ironed out version of leftmost “crashed” one (with the beak of the “f” in there).

hhp

No, it was the example how no-lig would look like.
I’ve chosen the middle one, but have weakened the wavy effect slightly.

:) I’ll try this, hrant (and be it just for fun).

So here is the next update (first posting, version 61).

I think my last “big” post from 14th October was sabotaged by the shortly after “intermezzo”. What I said there is still up-to-date, but I worked on, especially on:

- redesign ligatures, swashes, etc.A
- thickened smallcaps slightly
- a lot more of kerning with quotation marks etc.
- some opentype stuff
- rearranged diacritics

I will go on, but it’s mainly bugfixing now, so if you find some of them, you could help me a lot.

> bugfixing

There is still an overlap in the cursive (alternate italic) lowercase “r” (branch over stem).

How is this coming along?

I really like it, especially the “organic” effect created by your stroke variations, the sofa builder is fun, I’m not too sure of your ultralight version but I love the black one, a good looking font that made me think of Bussigny Serif. Nice one!

Roman can be considered as finished. It is just waiting for the italic and maybe a bold to be released. I have done kyrillic and greek letters, but they won’t be included in a first release. They are not good yet.

Italic is on it’s way to be finished.

Black and Ultralight haven’t moved yet.

Sofa Sans: A modified and improved version is being used in a children’s book I’ve made a view weeks ago. It does not have the same glyph count as Serif at the moment.

I’ve also done some experiments with an
- Sofa Antiqua: quite okay, but far away from finished, Bussigny reminds me of it...
- Sofa Script (not quite okay, what I want to do needs a lot of opentype and glyph variants).

At the moment, I have 15 hours of work a day, so I don’t have the time to go on. I will continue in about one and a half months. I have an urge to do that, but it is not possible right now...

It’s beautiful! Congratulations Sebastian.

So now I have added Version 0.80 to the first posting of this thread.
If no one has objections, this will be final version 1.0 for Sofa Serif Roman.

The forms are settled, the metrics are done, the features are defined and coded, and everything approved in small internal projects.
What is *not* final are the cyrillic and greek letters shown in the pdf. They will not be included in Version 1.0 of the font, but I wanted to show them anyway to get feedback.

I will now concentrate on finishing the two italics (normal and more swashed), which are about 70% on their way, and a bold version (just started). But with roman being “final” I now have something to follow.
And there are still ultrabold and ultralight, which are waiting to be continued. I needed them to go on with the roman, and they will now need some redrawing, but they were no waste of time... And I don’t even dare to mention Sans and Antiqua ;-)

So what do you think?
Sebastian

Oh and there’s another question I have: Hinting does not seem to work very well at the moment.

I have tried this:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&cat_id=fontdesi...

but as you can see in the PDF, it was not very successful, glyphs are still jumping up and down in some zoom levels, especially the capitals...

ok, now I am confused: I am sure I have created this thread in the critique -> serif section.
Why is it in the General Discussions section now?

I can move it for you Sebastian. I don’t know how it moved.

Thank you Miss Tiffany

very solid, IMO. just a few things

Roman: the bar on the eth seems a bit wimpy; i’m not sure what the h+macron is, but i don’t think it’s an hbar; i think your join on the k makes the outside counter too large and the inner counters too small; the diacritic on the dcaron, tcaron and lcaron might be a bit too discrete, you might be able to make it a bit longer; i think the tail on the y is too strong for genetral text use in English where y’s are actually quite frequent.

Cyrillic: the De seems a bit too narrow (same with lowercase de), it looks more narrow than the El; the Pe seems very wide; the teeth on the De don’t seem to be long enough, same with the tails on the Tse and Shcha (same for de, tse, shcha); the arms on Ka and Zhe seem a bit weak and i think they would work better with similar terminal treatments - these forms should correlate; The Zhe and zhe look much too narrow; the horizontal serif on the left foot of the El looks very strange, it would likely work better if it matched the kind of terminal that you put on the foot of the U (U looks similar to Y) same problem with the lower case el; the central bar of the Ef can overshoot the Cap and Baselines so that your counters can be larger; the tail on the Hard Sign might be able to be a bit larger; the be seems quite good to my eyes; the pe looks odd with the upper serifs missing as do tse, sha, shcha with missing lower serifs; the upper counter of the che seems a bit too large; The legs on Ya and ya seem week - same problem as with Ka and Zhe

there you go, i hope that helps. gook luck!

heck, i’ll even take a bit of a stab at the Greek:
beta, theta and delta seem very wide compared to the rest of the characters, some characters may be too narrow, that’s about all i can say on that one.

Thank you Paul, especially for looking at the diacritics as well, they are often forgotten, and there are not many sources to rely on, as you could see with the “hbar” (I must somewhere have seen this h+macron form and thought it was correct).

I have done the corrections you suggested, and I am especially more happy with the “k” now, and I have also changed the “y”, which now should be less dominant.

About the Cyrillic and Greek: As you can see, I just don’t know what I am doing there, it’s like flying a jumbo jet on sight instead of on instruments. I can have a look at other solutions, but I just don’t know if they are good, and chances are high that I mix things up. I have done some corrections now, but I’m sure they are not good yet, especially the “Ka, Zhe, Ya” problem is still present, and of course many forms don’t have the tension yet that I’d like to see. But first I have to become aware of the basics...
For the Greek, I have orientated widely on Adobes Garamond Premier, because I’ve heard that it has a fine greek alphabet, but of course it’s something different to do a Garamond Greek than to do an almost monolinear slab serif Greek.

path direction on Iogonek is wrong, or you didn’t remove overlap.

Thanks for pointing me to this, I have checked path directions some versions ago, but they already were a mess again... Now all path directions are postscript and when removing overlaps there are no more white artifacts (I have checked through everything in Indesign and PDF in different zoom levels, so I hope I have not missed one).

Concerning Opentype SMCP and C2SC features:

I have special small caps figures, currency units and some other symbols in the font.

Which version is better?
— SMCP only changes lower case letters, C2SC changes upper case, figures, symbols
— SMCP changes lowercase, figures, symbols, C2SC finally changes upper case as well

At the moment I have implemented the second variant.

And: is there a website, link, thread, that explains the problematique of turkish dotless i and ligatures? I could not find a good explanation yet, and I’d like to do this “right” from the beginning.

How is it going?

Roman: Bugfixing, but finished.
Roman Italic: Bugfixing, almost finished.
Bold: derivated from Roman, almost finished, looks good (this was surprisingly easy)
Bold Italic: working on it at the moment (this is quite difficult)

Maybe these threads can shed light on the turkish dotless i / ligatures problem:

http://typophile.com/node/34200
http://typophile.com/node/33330

Nice work!

i like this type, keep up!

Chears

Ferch

Tipografía-Montevideo

Very good job
A very attractive typography
I also liked the way in which we show
Congratulations
From Chile

Very nice! Can’t wait to see it finished.
___________________________
José Rodriguez
heyjose.com

just an update (see first posting for PDF):

- serif roman (finished)
- serif bold (quite finished?)

“serif roman italic”, “serif bold italic”, “sans roman” and “sans bold” coming soon (not included extensively in pdf as the need one more round of polishing).

Hello Sebastian,

Love the face. I will leave the deep typographic critique to the experts here, but I just noticed that in your specimen the apostrophe faces the other direction than I’m used to seeing. Is this intentional?

Looking forward to seeing more updates!

Thanks for your comment. Can you tell me on which page (or which sentence) the “wrong” apostrophe can be found? It might be an error in the font, or just in the example text (which is quite copy pasted without much revision...)

BTW: The current versions in the PDF do not have hinting applied yet. I’ve tried Autohinting with Fontlab + AFDKO, which works quite fine, but if I do that, the f_f_h and f_f_k ligature are not visible anymore in Indesign CS2 (not tested in other apps yet). All the other ligatures and glyphs work fine. Any ideas why this could be?

Check out pages 8 & 11 of your pdf, second to last line on both, the word “Don’t”. That’s the only two I saw. She’s a beaut by the way. Good lookin’ specimen to boot.

Thanks. It was just an error in the test document. Will be corrected in the next update.

I also spotted it in the sample copy – the french paragraph is the only one with multiple instances of apostrophes, and all are facing to the right.