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Posted by Graphirus in
11 Jan 2013 — 4:32pm
11 Jan 2013 — 4:32pm
Hello everybody,
I have prepared a small amount of text taken from Wikipedia to test how my font is looking. Please take a look at the attached PDF and critique, offer advice, prise or whatever you feel like doing. I believe the spacing and kerning is going ok, and another pair of eyes could help a lot.
Thanks!
PS. Please keep in mind that the typeface is not intended for reading long texts, so read it big and rest after a while )
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Test01.pdf | 29.73 KB |
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11 Jan 2013 — 5:57pm
You're getting dark spots at all of the acute angles (see /w/ especially). That seems like something to fix first.
11 Jan 2013 — 6:02pm
Yes eliason, that's something I'm aware of. Nevertheless, I was told that optical corrections should be done keeping in mind the final use that the font will have. As my typeface is intended for big point sizes, I'm not sure how much correction should I make as every point I move to make the "w" whiter means that its shape changes noticeably when viewed at a "normal" size.
11 Jan 2013 — 6:04pm
Oh, on the same topic about darker spots on acute angles, where can I find information about fixing that?
11 Jan 2013 — 6:57pm
Yes, the "w" and "M" especially are clotting.
It's certainly true that the smaller the target size the more modulation you have to do, but the forms you have need some modulation for any size.
Here's one thing you can try:
http://themicrofoundry.com/ss_trapping1.html
Use a big Aperture and a low Multiplier.
Also:
- Try moving up the tittles (dots of "i"/"j") to sit right above the top of the "t".
- I think the "6" and "9" would benefit from having a gap like some of your lc letters.
- You still need a lot of kerning.
- Your blank space could be a hair narrower.
- The parentheses are sitting too high, and the en-dash too low.
- The comma is out of character.
And can we see a charset?
hhp
12 Jan 2013 — 4:31am
Great tips hrant, thanks a lot!
I will try again using the flower trap method and I will post my result. Anyways, I don't know how far I can and should go.
Yes, I have considered that. There still is a lot of aligning to do... diacritics, punctuation marks and so on.
Good suggestion. I even think that more characters would benefit from that little gap, giving more consistency to the design.
I know I know, and I haven't grasped the class kerning thing yet, so I'm manually kerning pairs... a pain in the a$$.
What do you mean by "blank space"? The advance width? the width of the "space" character perhaps?
I designed the parenthesis to sit right on the baseline. In fact, the vertical stem goes straight from baseline to cap height, and then the curve protrudes from each end. The parenthesis is center-aligned to the characters inside... is this a wrong decision?
What is the usual alignment height of the n-dash?
What do you mean?
I'm gonna try finishing some glyphs I have left and post a charset. Do you know any way of generating a charset in Indesign? I don't wanna type 400+ glyphs!
12 Jan 2013 — 7:05am
Blank space: the blank space character (decimal 32).
Descenders are people too. :-)
But you can have contextual alt parentheses that sit high for the caps.
I think we had a thread about this recently; I myself put it at the same height as the hyphen - which you actually have at a good height.
The comma: I meant it looks like it's from another font. In contrast, look at your nice straight quote.
hhp
12 Jan 2013 — 9:39am
Thank you for the clarifications!
What is a good alignment for the parenthesis?
You can download the charset pdf of version 0.16 from http://www.sendspace.com/file/5gdess
Regards!
12 Jan 2013 — 3:57pm
For default forms I like them between the cap height and ascender height above, and somewhat above the descenders below.
Thanks for the charset. Looking only at the main alphanumerics, I'd say: the "f" is too shy, and out of character; the "Q" is really strange; and the "2" shouldn't have that curl at the bottom-right.
hhp
13 Jan 2013 — 10:45am
Thanks again for your comments hrant )
Any suggestions for the f?
The Q is strange indeed, but I like how it turned out... sometimes strange is good, specially with geometric lettershapes lacking special features by themselves.
I'm gonna fix the number "2" )
Any more suggestions?
Regards,
Francisco
13 Jan 2013 — 4:05pm
PDF file with corrections suggested by hrant
http://www.sendspace.com/file/uzr25v