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Provisionally titled Rollerscript until I can think of a better name!
Posted by Nick Cooke in
14 Oct 2010 — 7:14am
14 Oct 2010 — 7:14am
This is something I am working on at the moment
After my last script Olicana, written with a steel nib and ink, I thought I'd go more up-to-date with a Ball Pentel, but still with the mostly connected feel. I hope to achieve the authentic handwritten look of Olicana with this one, implementing lots of ligatures and some contextual alternates for certain characters. Or I might have individual characters as stylistic sets so that one or more characters may be substituted. I shall probably have Rough and Smooth styles also.
I am not sure about keeping the 'lumpy' bits in the smooth style or smoothing them out.
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14 Oct 2010 — 10:01am
Alright Nick, step back from the ledge! HA... handwriting anonymous could be of some help :-)Go for it... it has great potential.
I like the lumpy bits!
Michael
14 Oct 2010 — 10:02am
The caps look great!
14 Oct 2010 — 10:13am
This is amazing, Nick!
14 Oct 2010 — 10:32am
I like the lumpy bits!
Me too!
14 Oct 2010 — 11:18am
I like the lumpy bits!
Thirdied.
14 Oct 2010 — 1:50pm
I think your Olicana is really great, because it's so distinctive. It has masculine strength and a lot of energy, which is very unusual with cursive scripts. This has it too, go for it!
7 Nov 2010 — 6:30am
the "lumpy" weight takes it away -- this is ace.
7 Nov 2010 — 7:53am
Thanks everybody, I've been adding stuff. An update coming soon.
Like your occupation Don.
12 Nov 2010 — 6:35am
Here's an updated sample with some ligatures and contextual alternates:
13 Nov 2010 — 1:50am
beautiful -- a question/suggestion: how about a "vi" ligature? when i happen to write it, i never lift the pen.
13 Nov 2010 — 8:16am
I feel the N is unclear. The right side sweeps up and then down again, which gives me the impression of a sloppy M.
14 Nov 2010 — 2:05am
I can't see that at all - it looks like an N to me, especially in the context of a word. I don't read OPPOMEMT.
14 Nov 2010 — 6:51am
The similarity of the 'u' and 'n' glyphs might be a problem. I've had a client reject the use of FF Market because of this. Names can be especially problematic.
"Jung", "Chung" and "Gunnar" in FF Market:
14 Nov 2010 — 7:45am
FWIW, I can kind of see the M/N potential confusion.
When you write an N quickly, do you write the two verticals with downstrokes? I write a downstroke, then the diagonal down and the second vertical up.
14 Nov 2010 — 9:07am
I don't see any problem with the N. The new version feels a little less lively, but I have no idea why.
18 Nov 2010 — 8:20am
23 Nov 2010 — 8:17pm
Please do an alternate ‘N’. Everything else is so nice.
24 Nov 2010 — 8:02am
R, the latest mystery person to chime in about the N. So I've altered it.
24 Nov 2010 — 8:40am
I think I figured out the difference in my impression of some of the posts as more lively than others. The bigger ones show the roughness more, and that adds a bit of drama. In any case, wonderful work!
24 Nov 2010 — 9:00am
Thanks William, - Yes, it's quite surprising, as it really is pretty rough, but hardly noticeable at small sizes.
24 Nov 2010 — 9:12am
I think some dingbats would be useful - arrows, smiley/frowny faces, a heart, etc.
It'd be cool if you could work out a way to get an in-character underline of words as a possibility, but I suppose anything varying from pure horizontal would be tricky if not impossible...?
Oh, and I like the new N :-)
24 Nov 2010 — 9:58am
Thanks Craig. I figured out how to do crossings out for Olicana, so underlines should be similar in principle, except lower. Horizontal would be OK, but a slight upward angle from left to right might be better.
I was thinking of including emoticons, arrows in different directions, stars, moons, suns, hearts etc, (even though they're a bit 'girly' for my liking) - I'm not being sexist here, it's just that I'm a bloke from Northern England, (although not particularly macho - I'm a type designer after all) ;^)
24 Nov 2010 — 10:12am
Happy now :^)
24 Nov 2010 — 10:35am
nick, you've cooked up (being a lawyer, i am entitled to lame puns -- sue me.) something wonderfully edgy there -- but i'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. top notch, and i appreciate the ligature (note that i didn't complain about the n and m! haha).
24 Nov 2010 — 11:09am
How did you do the crossings in Oliciana, Nick?
24 Nov 2010 — 12:30pm
Nice one, Nick-
For me, with Suomi Hand, the hardest part was where to stop with the ligatures. Good luck. :·)
25 Nov 2010 — 1:40am
Nice emoticon!
I second the idea of the underline. Maybe it could be useful to style-link it to italic?
25 Nov 2010 — 2:14am
style-link it to italic
Huh? What does that even mean? It's just one style - it won't be style-linked to anything.
25 Nov 2010 — 3:21am
Glad you're all liking it so far.
Tomi - I had that problem with Olicana, but with this one I've used liga and calt combined to give more variety without doing so many ligs (even though there are still lots).
Frode - here is your tutorial for the day:
The crossings out were done by having crossings out in 8 lengths from short to long. Each of these is then placed to the left of the left side bearing in the glyph window, thus placing it over the previously typed characters. The width of the crossing glyph is set quite narrow - (198 in this case) so that it can be selected if need be. You can see in the picture how many spaces are needed to make the Crossing_7 glyph appear after the word. The Crossing_7 glyph is selected in the picture and you can see the width is narrow and the glyph itself is to the left.
I hope that is clear enough - it may become clearer if you study the metrics.
25 Nov 2010 — 6:31am
I meant, since in handwriting underline is used for emphasis, in a similar manner as italic is used setting roman text, it could have been nice to have the style link, so to make it easier working with existing text.
One example using generic serif and script fonts:
25 Nov 2010 — 7:29am
Oh, I see. Er.... I wouldn't know how to do that, especially with drawn lines of differing lengths. I tried selecting a word in InDesign and clicking underline, but it just looks like your Bradley Hand example; ie. a straight line, not 'wobbly hand-drawn'.
25 Nov 2010 — 1:19pm
Yes, I know. I don’t know if it’s possible to style-link to underline (and certainly it isn’t with double underline). That’s why I suggested italic, even if it isn’t philologically correct (but, to some degree, semantically it is).
26 Nov 2010 — 12:35am
Nope, still don't understand.
26 Nov 2010 — 2:06am
(Happy Now.)
You could achieve what riccard0 is thinking of by making a copy of the font that underlines every word (there should be a number of ways to do this with contextual alternates and get a natural look to the underlines) and calling it the italic font. But I'm not sure if that's really the most practical solution for users wanting to add underlines.
26 Nov 2010 — 4:12am
Hmmm... I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be the best use of my time. I'll probably do the underlines as detailed above for the crossing out. It's not something I'm overly concerned about anyway, it's just a little extra add-on.
26 Nov 2010 — 4:47pm
I think you're right. But it would be cool to trigger it with a simple feature that interprets _this_ which is a common computer shorthand.
29 Nov 2010 — 7:45am
I've done lengths from 1 to 9 available from the glyphs palette.
30 Nov 2010 — 8:12am
the last sample looks very much like graffiti. nice.
1 Dec 2010 — 10:01am
I still like your original N best ;-)
1 Dec 2010 — 12:36pm
Grrrrrrrr!
1 Dec 2010 — 12:56pm
Nick, it is your font and your handwriting; do it your way ;-)
1 Dec 2010 — 2:04pm
Wow, you're on fire, Nick. Get in!
For me, the more roughness you have, the more obvious the repetition when it occurs. This is clearly mitigated by an increase in ligatures and contextuals.
Enjoy tobogganning in Wharfedale!
6 Dec 2010 — 2:56am
I have now added some emoticons:
Nick, I'm a wimp - I can't stay out there too long, I don't think it has ever been colder here.
Edit. Chris, I have redone the N as I have discovered from past experience that if there is a perceived 'problem' with a character potential customers may use another typeface or even worse do their own alterations. I have see quite a few really bad replacement 'r's of one of my other scripts - Gizmo. (Soon to be remedied and given the whole OT treatment as Gizmo Pro).
6 Dec 2010 — 7:52am
Nick: I am sure you made the proper business decision, I know the feeling well.
13 Dec 2010 — 1:33pm
Great work Nick!
15 Dec 2010 — 5:30pm
This is great, Nick. It really captures an authentic feel to handlettering which is not easily achieved with a font.
I personally did not have a problem with the previous "n" and "u". They each had the correct arch, it was simply a bit more subtle. Given context combined with even subtle clues I think the average reader would not have trouble with legibility.
16 Dec 2010 — 2:00am
My thoughts exactly Stephen, (and thanks), but you know, some people are just so damn picky about the smallest details...
16 Dec 2010 — 4:04am
Nick: How do you create the "rought" effect?
16 Dec 2010 — 6:50am
Sure Pablo, I'll reveal my secrets to you. Writing at normal hand witing size with a Ball Pentel Fine Point R50, scanning at 300%, 300dpi. Place in Illustrator then LiveTrace on the 'Lettering' setting. I then scaled to about 1300%, copied, then pasted into the glyph window in FontLab then optimized, (clean up paths really).
So, it's not an 'effect' in reality - that's just how it is.
16 Dec 2010 — 7:06am
This is brilliant, the underline and strikethrough really top it off :)