Ok, I have one... the upper case S looks like a bended clip, like it's too open. Also the lower right leg of the & (the diagonal) seems like isn't firmly stepping on the baseline.

Héctor

Héctor and Dan, thanks for your kind words and helpful suggestions. I will give them a try. Thanks to your encouragement, I am hoping to submit it to foundries soon.

The first version I drew was the light caps and small caps. I was looking for a squarish face for smallcaps and couldn’t find what I wanted so I started designing my own. I did a few characters in Adobe Illustrator for a simple heading on the job I was working on. I then brought it to FontLab to extend. I did two kinds of Lights, this one which is very regular and squared with equal proportions and another (which I will post soon as a separate face) in classic Roman proportions and much rounder. The lowercase in both was an afterthought at the time. I then did the bold and went back and forth with the light a few times before starting the regular. I did a “medium” too but it needs work.
Dan, I will try an alternate single-story g which should be quite easy to add. What bothers you about my double-bowl g? I know it is a bit out of mainstream but what else is troubling to you?
Héctor, I will look at the S and & again to see if I can fix them a bit. I understand what you mean about long text. I would not intend this face for a novel. You and Dan are right It is a more corporate or technical face.

Has anyone figured out what I “almost” did yet? A hint is in the name and is somewhat apparent on pages 5, 6, & 7 of my PDF.

ChrisL

"you “almost” made the charwidths the same for all three weights!"

Dead on Paul!

The "almost" is that I did not do it intentionally. It just happened. I am a very "optical" kind of guy and just judge everything by eye. When I did each weight, I did the metrics as I felt would be best for the way it looks. I didn't even notice how similar the fit was until I printed the above PDF! Now that I see it, I think I will try to push the "almost" a bit more and see if it works. This "Align" concept would be a good way to insure fit in text when you were adding bold or light in the copy and then changed your mind. You would not have to worry about reflow! I am sure someone else must have thought of this before though.

ChrisL

>Dan, I will try an alternate single-story g which should be quite easy to add. What bothers you about my double-bowl g? I know it is a bit out of mainstream but what else is troubling to you?

I guess that I just don't like it. Maybe its a mainstream thing, but I just think that it is wierd. And in display sizes, you can't look away (you can sort of get away with things in text, I guess). Please don't hate me :(

"Please don’t hate me :("

Dan,
Don't sweat it. I have thick enough skin. When I ask for a crit, I don't expect everyone to just say good things. We are all colleagues here just trying to help eachother do better work.

ChrisL

i think the g is great, but i'm always for alternates.

On P8 of the pdf, your u/c V is different (so is the small caps l/c version) in the Regular from the other two weights. In the light and bold the cap V looks backwards to me (especially in view of the l/c v). I think I prefer the regular weight cap V which means maybe the u/c A should be a rotational version of the V in terms of the curve at the top being on the other side.

Did you ever try an M with sloping sides as per W?

Do you want me to go now?

Nick, Please Don't go! :-)

The V on the regular version is correct. The other weights I meant to flip but forgot. The rule is set by the lc v and the others should match it. Only the regular does so.
I tried both the diagonal M and the squared W and found both too jarring so I went back to the conventional straight M.
The s fits neighboring characters better slopped the way I have done it. I tried the other way and the stroke just didn't pull around enough.
I fought with the 2 c's many times. When the size is small the narrower way works; when the type is large, the wider c seems better. It was more of a color issue and I found I just had to compromise.
I don't understand your comment about the slopes on the EFGKPR terminals. They all slope the same way. Perhaps you mean it goes against the calligraphic flat pen angle model? The slope direction I gave it gives a bit more air to the lower counter as opposed to the upper making the vertical balance better to my eyes. I didn't feel that the flat pen model had a bearing on such a non-calligraphic face. I just used positive to negative space reasoning (dare I say Notan:-) The angle cuts help reduce dark spots at the joins. This face was intended as more of a tech/corporate as opposed to a warm humanistic face. I think that traditional type and calligraphy savvy users would probably agree with you on that though.

Thanks Nick for taking the time and care to comment and by all means stay :-)

ChrisL

Another thought: Maybe the terminals on the S and s should do the same as those on the C, G and c?

Nice going Chris. I like the numerals especially. They are more round than the letters though.

I am wondering if you can find a better solution for the crotches of the diagonals. They don't seem to totally in harmony with the cut joins on the connections of the branches.

Check on whether the a,g,e, and s would be better narrowerer. The curved leg on the K, k looks a little out of place. Should the 'cut' on the 'a' be at the top of the bowl instead of the bottom?

I'm going to be away from the internet for a while, but good luck with this; it's promising.

Ahh, now I get it, you edit at the tp in the black bar, good :-)

See new attachment.

ChrisL

PS: I included the VERY SPECIAL OpenType Feature code for the alt g in the PDF for Dan and Terry's benefit :-)

Chris, can we see the alt characters in display size? I really see this as being a good marketable magazine display face. Lemme see it big!

I have just uploaded a dummy title/contents page from a fictitious high-tech magazine which I call Gadgets&Gizmo. There are several VERY famous authors who have written articles so pay particular attention to the bylines.

ChrisL

PS: Does anybody want to comment on my "Feature" code in my second post? Dan?

Chris, I guess I missed the joke. I also wanted to see the alt characters big. I wanted to see the alt "g" in that example.

Chris, your original "g" is growing on me though... I'd still like to see the other in context. Paula Scher and I writing an article together, ha! :) That would be interesting! (For me at least.) :)

Thank-you all!

Hector, As soon as I find a foundry, it will be available. Glad to have you as a first customer :-)

Dan, I am glad to be able to make the g whizz :-)

Terry, Have you ever scripted Opentype features in FontLab? If not, it might be hard to understand the joke. What I had written in the 2nd PDF was the contextual alternates feature script where the glyph "g" was substituted for the glyph "g.alt" when the context was Dan and you as users. This of course is not possible, but it was a fun joke to code anyway:-) Sorry no one got it. :-(
I will redo the magazine page using the alts tonight and post it.

ChrisL

:..are the alts the same width as the letters they replace?"

The S and s is the same width but the g is a bit narrower. It takes a bit more space to fit the double bowled g. William suggested that I make it (and the "a") narrower anyway. The problem comes at smaller sizes. The g and a look too dark and tight when narrowed. At larger sizes, they can be narrowed without any problem. I will tinker some more and see what I can do with it.

ChrisL

Uniwidth is a great feature, but it tends to exert too much pressure (on the "natural" widths of the black bodies) on the outlying reaches of color. In the first version of Patria for example all four weights were uniwidth, but I couldn't get the Light to be tight enough without making the letterforms too wide and I couldn't get the Bold to be loose enough without making the letterforms too narrow. A good solution I arrived at was to leave the Regular and Demi uniwidth, but make the Light/Bold spaced tighter/looser by a fixed amount (tracking +/-10) thus giving the user an easy way to force uniwidth if desired.

hhp

I have just added an updated PDF of my fake magazine. I redid the initial page using the alts and added 2 more pages with BIG type to satisfy Terry:-)
The last 2 pages are the same except the final page uses the alts.

ChrisL

Paul,
Yours is one permutation that I did not try. I tried (individually):

sub rr’ [i j] by r.alt;
sub r'r’ [i j] by r.alt;
sub r'r" [i j] by r.alt;

Thanks Paul, Let me give yours a try

ChrisL

I have worked on the metrics to equalize the 3 weights so that they truly "Align" so I posted above a new 2-page PDF showing a column of text in each weight in both lower case and small caps. The file is named Align_3weightAlign.pdf

ChrisL

"It seems as if a rectangle dot for the ‘i’ glyph would be more appropriate. Or possibly a dimond dot?"

Hi Kyle, thanks for the input. I actually started out with a square dot and felt it was too similar to the rest. Since all the strokes are so rectalinear, i thought it would be good to oppose them with a "Dot-Line" treatment (kinda' Morse Code :-). As the weights get bolder, you may notice that the dots get more square. I needed to hold the weight within the narrow space so that was my compromise.

ChrisL

I like the alt g, I just think the hook should be a little shorter under the bowl. (Man, am I picky!) I'm so used to the original "g" now it really doesn't make me any difference. :) Good show!

But that's when the pertinence of a novelty moves "down" from the
conscious to the subconscious layer - never simply disappearing.

hhp

> it just takes its place in your personal reference of acceptable syntax.

But what it does to our subconscious is:
1) Subvisible.
2) Not necessarily good.
3) Beyond our control.

We are neither programmable chips nor imaginary ethereal beings.

hhp

> who tells our subconscious which is the “standard model”?

Now that's a good question.

> ... not that odd.

I didn't say they were.

hhp