Seems there was a freeware font at some point in time that was based on Durer's proportional studies. Don't recall where I saw it though. Sorry.

Perhaps you'd be intereted in this.

How about Hands On Albrecht D from URW++?

Nathan -
the font you were thinking of could have possibly been Codex by Emerald City Fontwerks or Roughwork from Scriptorium.
It looks like Roughwork could be a match for your lettering example.

They're sort of just called "constructed" fonts, although that also makes one think of the 20th century "Soviet-style" stuff, or the cut&paste fad of the 90s. But if you're looking for a term for fonts that include the "scaffolding" so to speak in there, I don't know a term for that - probably because I know of only one such design: Agfa's Rubino.

In terms of references, Matthew Carter has written one of the very few substantial articles about the topic: "Theories of Letterform Construction", in issue #26-27 (AKA Volume 13-#2 & Volume 14-#1) of the APHA Journal*. That was "Part 1", but unfortunately it looks like part 2 won't happen. Carter lists Pacioli, Durer and Tory as having tried their hand at geometrically constructed capitals.

* http://www.printinghistory.org/htm/journal/contents.html#26_27

A harder reference to find is Oldrich Hlavsa's amazing "A book of type and design" of 1960. Part of it is dedicated to geometrically constructed alphabets, and besides Tory and Pacioli he covers Pierre le Be, Jean de Vingle, and Damiano da Moille. Besides that, Hlavsa's book contains many "lost" gems of type design as well, plus some interesting personal thoughts on type.

BTW, I once bought a facsimile of Durer's "Of the Just Shaping of Letters" for $10, and it contains comprehensive sketches and full discussions of the whole A-Z, and even an attempt at geometrically constructing blackletter lowercase at the end. I just checked bookfinder.com and it looks like it's available for as low as $3.50.

hhp

I want to thank you all for helping me out... you've led me in some great directions. Because of your help, I've found two fonts that suit me quite well: Codex and Rough Work (prior to paul posting his message -- thank you though!).

The Codex font isn't Linotype's, it's from Emerald City Font Works (http://www.speakeasy.org/~ecf/codex.htm) so I know where to purchase that, but I'm not locating a place to purchase Rough Type... any ideas?

Thanks again!

I put a link to My Fonts after i was able to find it. Just be sure to spell it as one word when you search for it

If you want to wait a few weeks, there will be another Dürer option:
http://p22.com/ihof/durercaps.html
We didn't even know about the URW++ version. :^}
Looks like a different digital approach to the same source material. :^)

I thought you all (or anyone else that finds this thread in the future) might be interested in this:

http://members.iif.hu/visontay/ponticulus/britannicus/artists/durer-abc.html

It has the fonts from "OF THE JUST SHAPING OF LETTERS FROM THE APPLIED GEOMETRY OF ALBRECHT D

Richard Kegler: I really like the filled version of the fonts at http://p22.com/ihof/durercaps.html

Are you affiliated with this company? If so, do you know exaclty when these will be available?

Hello Peter, Yes I am affiliated with this company. The boss is a real tyrant: cruel...but fair. The official release date is Oct 1, but travel obligations will have it out by Sept 25 or so.

He da boss.

hhp

Well since we're on a kick...
There's another couple of Durer fonts at L'Abecedarienne's site.
I think i know of one more... but it's eluding me right now...

Don't worry boss. It will be ready in time.

I didn't know about these others, but the IHOF release will still be different enough to fill a need. I hope so. It will have J,U and W and the overlay option is working very well, but only with kerning turned on.

Terry, I love your prince.
If you run into him please extend a humble pledge of fealty from a hardcore monarchist.

hhp

I'm a little late to this party, but wanted to mention a couple more contemporary faces along these lines... Image Club's Rubino Serif and Rubino Sans.

Oh, sorry for calling Rubino an Agfa font.
BTW, I think that was the first such type design, no?

hhp

Terry, you're absolutely right about your new font filling a need. I specifically wanted the letters to be one color and the "scaffolding" (as Hrant so eloquently put it) to be a light grey color... from the look of your font, this will get me exactly what I need without having to invest as much time in editing.

Also, the J, U and W letters are a bonus! Thanks and I'm marking the days until the 25th.

> Oh, sorry for calling Rubino an Agfa font.

Technically, Agfa owns all of the Image Club faces now, so I guess it could be referred to that way. And I apologise for not realizing that you mentioned Rubino earlier in the thread, Hrant.

Gotta read everything a bit closer...

> BTW, I think that was the first such type design, no?

Not sure about that. Perhaps the first digital version with that much detail. It's a pretty complex design, and used to choke Fontographer's TrueType generation...

You will want to look into the work of Geoffroy Tory and Albrecht Dürer also.

Terry! Great to see you here on Typophile. Congrats on your upcoming Durer release. We missed you at TypeCon. Hope to see you at TC05 in NYC next summer, if you can get off the mountain long enough...

In regards to geometrically constructed letterforms, the work of
Yakov Chernikhov stands alone in brilliance. I bought this book, number 257/500, and it has inspired me to try designing a Cyrillic display face. You can see my first glyph "final" draft here.

Since Pacioli was mentioned:
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/madtype/pacioli/

I've seen some of the sketches that Eric Gill did for Gill Sans, and he creates the 'g' with 3 circles of different sizes. I'll try to find it.