Kerning? That doesn't make the letter bodies different.

To me white space is excessive only if it's associated
with a disjoin in the letters (weakening the bouma).
An "r" with a longer beak would "virtually join" the
following letter at the top, and the characteristic (read:
conducive to readability) white at the bottom would
be amplified.

hhp

Kerning can certainly address things like "ro", but if you go
to the trouble of having a narrow "r" to accommodate a hard
top-left in the following letter, you might as well take the small
next step of taking advantage of a soft top-left.

> Does my narrow /r/ just make the following letter look too wide?

As you seem to be ending up concluding yourself,
that's a display-face worry, not a text-face one.

hhp

Hmm, given the bracketed nature of the /t/ crossbar, my eye doesn't really need the two crossbars to relate in length (if that is what you are implying).

When I get to kerning I would probably move some of these letters back apart (rv, rw)--does that seem counterproductive? I guess I'll have to wait until then to accurately judge the effectiveness of the alternate in word-shape.

I just meant that I'm doing all this to get the letters closer together, but in the end I'll kern them apart.

On the other hand I don't understand why "rw" is a hair tighter than "rv".

Yeah, that doesn't make sense, does it. I spaced each within strings of nnnvnnoovooo etc., and I guess my eyes weren't consistent from letter to letter. I've fixed it now.

On the topic of small caps:

The subtlety is lost if the reader notices them, hence the further from cap height you go the less like capitals they will look. Now small caps are supposed to look like capitals, they just don’t have the function caps normally have: marking the beginning of a sentence.

Capitals should be heavier than minuscles for many reasons, but I consider the primary one the larger counters. An “O” needs to be heavier then an “o” just to look similar. Since small caps are often—and indeed should be—tracked wider than minuscles, there is a certain need for some extra weight here as well. The loose spacing makes them seem thinner than they are. Remember, white and black are intertwined in notan.

Yes, but if they are too small the subtlety is lost: they suddenly stand out—the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do in the first place. At that point it’s just the designer showing off.

Some subtle alterations: (2=after alteration)
/e/ - brought the bottom terminal rightward. I think that makes it less "self-contained" and gives it better direction towards the following letter.
/y/ - brought the bottom terminal rightward and raised the intersection.
/v/w/y/ - narrowed by bringing the top right terminal leftward, and also adjusted serif there to be wider and darker.

You mean in units?

They are about 97% as long.

This shows (at 2) the descenders shortened just by 5 units (thus now about 95% the length of the ascenders). Any shorter gets kind of stubby. I do think that shortening of descender helps the ascenders not look stubby, and as you say it should facilitate tighter vertical spacing. I've attached a pdf to the top post showing how it looks at 10/12, 10/11, and 10/10.

Thanks Hrant.
Maybe you like the extender proportions of Century Oldstyle, the point of departure for this design? Seems like it was made with the same rule of thumb you mention!

BTW, if decreasing the descender length is causing the font to
shoot for a lower ideal point size than you'd like*, you might
instead use a lesser decrease and increase the ascenders a bit.

* Also mind the resultant necessary shift in color and spacing.

hhp

> the "still older" folks got vertical proportions right,
> and the "old folks" circa the ATF heyday screwed
> things up because of the constraints

You have a point, but to be fair the "still older" folks
had a lesser challenge, in terms of not tackling systems
of fonts; you could even say that handling constraints is
a higher level of Design.

Did ATF give up too much grace for the sake of economy
(of space and/or mechanics)? Or maybe they were giving
the much higher frequency of ascenders than descenders
due credit. It's an argument that can go either way I guess.

> for a reinterpretation (not a revival), this seems
> like an opportune place to distinguish my design

Good point.

--

I think #2 above seems quite well balanced, including in
terms of vertical proportions versus color and spacing,
although I might prefer to see it slightly darker.

--

> Do you think it belongs there?

FB is sort of the unofficial inheritor of the old American
foundries, the closest thing we have to an ATF phoenix.
Assuming they don't already have something too close
(or plans for something too close) it seems to make very
good sense. William would be the ideal advisor to you in
exploring such a possibility.

hhp

Revised structure of italic /X/ to one that better fits the style of the font. (2 shows revised)

Better, but too narrow. I think you could make that swash at the left bottom of E and D more prominent. It works, but keeping it shy spoils the effort.

I like the “change in direction”.

Throwing some E's against the wall to see if anything sticks:

How about using the bottom of the 4th /E/ as reference for the top of /T/?

Yes, as soon as I saw that /E/ bottom developing I turned my laptop upside down and tried to imagine it for the /T/.

Okay, here's where these revised italic caps stand:
/F/ has simpler arm to match /E/
/L/ has revised bottom
/A/ has two way serif on right
/T/ top now patterned after /E/ bottom
/E/'s bottom is thinned and the whole letter narrowed since last shown
/N/ has firmer, straighter thin strokes
/D/ has the loop as before

I think a similar treatment as on bottom left of E and L would look better on D instead of the loop. The loop feels too small to be a loop and too bulbous to be a serif.

Middle one for me. I think the stress in the bottom one is too calligraphic for this typeface.

Middle one for me. I think the stress in the bottom one is too calligraphic for this typeface.

Yeah, that one gives a blackletter vibe! I may just revert to a plain serif here, which at this point I think I'd like better than any of these.

Here's a go at the caps that will have simplified forms for all-caps settings, which are now used to create the small caps:

What about using a Fleischmann "y"?

hhp

Yes, that's it (perhaps with more continuity of
"stroke" thickness going down into the descender).
It's a sadly under-used form. But hopefully it will
eventually enjoy the same resurgence as the Koch "g"... :-)

BTW, I know of one font that's used it: Chank's
"Venis", for which I once wrote a positive review,
and immediately got flack for that! Not sure why.

hhp

A more u-shape based italic u would be too much?

That was actually the direction I went first (here at d), but I thought it was coming out kind of sloppy-looking.