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Mint
Posted by Bendy in
15 Mar 2009 — 2:54pm
15 Mar 2009 — 2:54pm
Hi,
Here's what I've been working on for the last week, taking a break from Eternal (in the serif crit section).
I started with the intention of creating something very crisp and clean, following the current trend for roundy corners. I wanted the shapes to look slightly experimental, so tell me if they work or don't work yet.
I wanted a large x-height and non-descending caps to work for small sizes and for screen use. It was a struggle to fit the tail of the g in there, and I had to break the rule with Q a little. I've got only autohinting at present, and need to work out how the off-verticals will work on screen (for example M anti-aliases rather badly).
Strangely, it somehow looks like there's a bit of Optima in there, which I've only just noticed. I don't have numerals yet. Hate drawing numerals.
I'll refrain from picking out individual characters for now to see what you guys think first.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Mint.pdf | 433.4 KB |
| Mint Ultralight and Ultrablack First Draft.pdf | 445.66 KB |
| Mint Booklet.pdf | 506.35 KB |
| Mint Specimen May 2011.pdf | 528.1 KB |
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5 May 2011 — 7:12am
I've created a new pdf to show progress. The regular weight is pretty much done, except for some kerning I think. No more drawing at least!
The other three weights are still only alphabetics, so I'm hoping for some critique before filling out all the punctuation and assorted jumble of other glyphs.
5 May 2011 — 7:40am
That mu descender seems very slanted to me (though I don't have a lot of mu experience....)
Are there any standard ligatures in the fonts?
5 May 2011 — 10:19am
Yeah I'm not too familiar with the mu either, I'll need to find out from somewhere what the preference is!
Standard ligs — not connected. I figured they'd be too much in a sans face, so there's a slight shortening of the f's crossbar and the spacing is a little different. Connections are in the dlig feature, along with the really unusual ligs, which I may move into an hlig feature (not sure if this is always supported, so maybe another stylistic set?)
And I haven't forgotten about your observations above, Craig. I'll have a close look at each of them. Thanks.
5 May 2011 — 11:22am
Looking at the fat weight, I think there's too much taper in the arms of /E/ and /F/. All those clashing angles look awkward.
I expected the counters in /K/ to be fully round, like in /X/.
What happens with /gj/?
Do your descending alternate /f/s descend too far?
I still don't quite get the historical ligatures (and takeoffs therefrom) in a typeface like this, but I guess they don't do any harm.
Sometimes I think the contrast in the ultralight works and sometimes I think it doesn't.
5 May 2011 — 2:18pm
Interesting observations. I'll see what other solutions exist for the fat E and F. Do you think the bold has the same problem? Could it be that those shapes are also too wide?
K: do you think the unexpectedness contributes in a cool way or a buggy way? One of the premises was to sometimes let the black 'win' and sometimes the white.
gj collides in a major way, but I don't personally mind that.
Descending fs: these reach the bottom of the other descenders; I guess that's another feature that's not really necessary?
I really wanted to keep the stress in the ultralight, it's such an important part of the other weights and I think distinguishes it a bit — I can't think of many light stressed sans faces.
Other questions:
Is there any logic to my currency symbols; some have the bars removed across the centre, and I generally prefer that, but not sure if that model would work in all of the other (unfamiliar) ones?
Tilde: too big?
Guillemets: too heavy?
Stacked diacritics (Vietnamese): relative sizes ok?
Ornaments: enough? What others would be nice? (Oh, I said the drawing was done already.)
Kreska: big enough?
5 May 2011 — 3:01pm
Well, I'd say it's less bothersome in the bold. The closeness of the differently-angled top and bottom contours of the counters in the fat adds to the clash. It kind of reminds me of pick-up sticks - did you ever play with those? I don't think the width is part of the issue.
On the /K/, I guess every other wedge shaped counter is round-ended (except for here and /R/), so it looks a little like an inconsistency to me.
6 May 2011 — 4:22am
About mu:
http://typophile.com/node/78525
6 May 2011 — 4:43pm
Do you work full time in type design as this looks very good. Apart from anything the feel it has of being over exposed or photographically enlarged from a printed speciman is really fresh. You will be publishing this I'd say.