Typophile - Making the letter "O" even in width all the way around. - Comments

Emma >>I did

Vladimir Tamari — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:38:21 -0700

Emma >>I did Tools>Operations>Reverse Contours. But this did not work.
Please can you explain where I have gone wrong.>>

What you did sounds right- unless you had both contours selected when you reversed them. When an inner contour has the reverse direction of the outer, where the two overlap is subtracted so you get a proper O shape with a hollow centre. If both contours run clockwise or both anticlockwise the inside O will be filled- there is a little arrow on each contour that shows the direction. Study the Fontlab 4.6 manual for alternate ways to reverse the contours for example by trying “set PS direction or Set TT direction” buttons if they exist, as they do on the 5.0 version. Good luck.

Thanks Mark I tried the two

Emma Ford — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:56:21 -0700

Thanks Mark I tried the two suggestions and particularly the Cut and Paste from Illustrator works very well.

>>Tools/Panels/Smart Shapes/Ellipse Specify the height and the width to get a circle or oval/OK. Then repeat the operation using the same height and width minus double the required line width. That draws a smaller circle or oval nicely centered inside the first. Before de-selecting the inner shape, reverse its contour direction Contour/Paths... and Voila!<<

Vladimir I tried to follow your suggestion but I could not get it to work. I am new to Fontlab and I do have an older version (4.6). The closest I could find was Windows>Primitive Panel>Ellipse. I Placed the outer ellipse with Properties and then OK. I then Placed the inner ellipse with Properties and before deselecting it with OK I did Tools>Operations>Reverse Contours. But this did not work.

Please can you explain where I have gone wrong.

I am currently finalizing an

Thomas Phinney — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:38:59 -0700

I am currently finalizing an Arabic font that has all its line widths equal - I wonder what is a good description for such an attribute: doesn’t ’mono-width’ refer to equal overall width of the glyphs between their sidebearings?

Instead of “mono-width” it’s “monospace.”

The other term you’re looking for is “monoline.”

Cheers,

Thanks William - this is

Vladimir Tamari — Wed, 7 May 2008 08:20:34 -0700

Thanks William - this is very interesting and educational. I measured the O in Gill Sans and it was thinner on top than on the sides. Then I used your link to the article by the disigner of Erica- he seems to have done a good job of emulating Gill Sans and it is very nicely done.

>>Hebrew script also follows the heavy horizontal light vertical rule—maybe it’s connected with right to left writing?>>

Arabic has many script variants (and their font adaptations and derivatives) but the most common ones do indeed have a thick horizontal and a thin vertical. On the other hand there is the strictly geometrical kufic which has equal width for both. The Arabic in Arial font follows the general rule but the Hebrew there has thin horizontals and thick verticals!

This thread started out with a discussion of a perfectly round O, a feature of Johnston’s London Underground lettering and Gill’s adaptation. Gill’s writings on typography and his Sans were a big influence in my work.

>Are there any good Latin or

William Berkson — Tue, 6 May 2008 06:04:10 -0700

>Are there any good Latin or other scrips that have equal outline widths?

I don’t know of any, though there might well be. I just checked Avant Garde in the big sizes you can display on Font Shop and even there the O seems to be slightly thinner on the top and bottom compared to the sides.

There are reversed-contrast fonts, though. The ’Old West’ slab styles are like this, though they are kind of novelty display faces. The most famous reversed-contrast sans is Antique Olive, and a more recent one FF Balance. I don’t like either of these personally, but they are well crafted and have a certain look.

I don’t read Arabic script, but here would be my guess: equal weight of horizontal and vertical strokes will still make the horizontals look heavier than the verticals, because that’s the way the eye & brain work. But since the Arabic script is generally heavier in the horizontals, it might well not cause the problems it does in roman styles, and the letter forms may still look “normal.” So I can conceive of it working fine, though I really don’t know.

An interesting comparison might be the recent Hebrew typeface Erica sans, whose name is a tribute to Eric Gill’s sans. Hebrew script also follows the heavy horizontal light vertical rule—maybe it’s connected with right to left writing? And generally I think doing the latin script rules in Hebrew letters looks awful. But somehow the designer here brought it off brilliantly, and this face won a TDC award and is now very popular in Israel. You can read an interview with the designer here.

Thank you William for your

Vladimir Tamari — Tue, 6 May 2008 05:07:57 -0700

Thank you William for your excellent summary of your thoughts about this interesting topic. I am currently finalizing an Arabic font that has all its line widths equal - I wonder what is a good description for such an attribute: doesn’t ’mono-width’ refer to equal overall width of the glyphs between their sidebearings? Indeed some portions of my glyphs appear thicker or thinner than others because of illusions, but somehow I find that acceptable. In large sizes I like the clean ’absolute’ or ’pure’ look of the outlines. Are there any good Latin or other scrips that have equal outline widths?

Vladimir, the illusion rules

William Berkson — Mon, 5 May 2008 06:11:14 -0700

Vladimir, the illusion rules are partly quantified, but there is a whole lot that hasn’t been quantified yet. For example, generally, overshoots are said to work in the 2-3% range. But it is also argued that they should be different for bold characters and pointed characters. And Matthew Carter has said that he generally thinks that the S needs slightly less overshoot to look balanced.

I think knowing the general guidelines is very useful, but equally important is not to view them as iron-clad rules, but instead to rely on your eyes.

This is assuming you want the balance such guidelines are aimed at achieving. Your design may not want such balance, particularly in a display face. For example if you have a ’bouncy’ baseline, you might want to have a character look shorter. Or if you wanted it to look brutally mechanical, you might want the heaviness that geometric equality of horizontal and vertical can give in roman script.

I think the ’rules’ do change to some extent from script to script. In the Roman script the rule is heavy verticals and thin horizontals. Our eyes are accustomed to that, so violating that looks heavy, whereas in another script with different underlying ’rules’ it won’t.

So there is a mixture of the universal—the way human visual perception works—and partly conditioning by the usual rules of the script.

Overall, I think the thing is to be aware of how what we see and what is on the paper or screen are significantly different, and then to make a conscious decision on how to deal with the differences to get the effect we want in the viewer.

Eben, Mark: In wondering

Vladimir Tamari — Mon, 5 May 2008 00:15:10 -0700

Eben, Mark: In wondering whether one can ignore the illusion rules I was not criticising a sensible practice honed over centuries by lettering and font-design practitioners. Rather I felt that

1-Illusions are not quantifiable and a beginner (like me) can over-do this fine-tuning and the result would be just as ’wrong’

2- In some scripts like Arabic, or for some fonts that are less than mainstream in design, or some uses like advertising or illustration, illusions may be acceptable. They may even enhance certain glyphs in close-viewing situations or in certain combinations with other glyphs by providing visual variety in unexpected ways.

The nodes I placed were

Mark Simonson — Sun, 4 May 2008 19:02:49 -0700

The nodes I placed were arbitrary, but sufficient to force FontLab to make a path that is more parallel. Adobe Illustrator places the extra nodes closer to the top and bottom, which presumably are the optimum places to put them.

The extra nodes may not be strictly necessary. It may in some cases be possible to draw a curve with only the top, bottom and side nodes that is very close to the same as the one with the extra nodes. But there is a limit to the kind of contour you can make with just two control points. You cannot make every possible curve that would fit between the two nodes. In fact, as William pointed out, even a circle can only be very closely approximated—not a perfect circle—when described with Bézier curves. If you can’t get the curve you want, you may need to add nodes. But don’t use more than you need.

“We look forward to the

dberlow — Sun, 4 May 2008 13:16:24 -0700

“We look forward to the day when the font software can draw an oval perfectly even all the way around automatically.”

We look back on the day when people were not so lazy.

What other advantages do the

1985 — Sun, 4 May 2008 11:05:57 -0700

What other advantages do the extra nodes provide? Do they need to be positioned on the extrema (at 45°)?

Mark, could you explain the

1985 — Sun, 4 May 2008 11:00:51 -0700

Mark, could you explain the extra nodes more fully?

I have never quite understood them, though I have a feeling that my designs require them.

Thanks

Eben—I was replying to

Mark Simonson — Sun, 4 May 2008 07:18:57 -0700

Eben—I was replying to Vladimir’s comment, but you must have jumped in just before I posted.

Some say that overshoot should be proportionally less for display sizes and proportionally greater for text sizes. If this is true, the further away you are, the smaller the shapes will appear, and the more overshoot you will need. I’m not so sure about this. I’ve never noticed O’s appearing smaller relative to flat-sided letters when they were farther away. In any case, if it were true, it would be impractical to do anything about it, given that type may be set at virtually any size and viewed at any arbitrary distance. (Put “This poster best viewed at five feet.” at the bottom in small print?)

You are trying to draw a

MiseEnAbime — Sun, 4 May 2008 01:16:17 -0700

You are trying to draw a curve parallel to an ellipse drawing another ellipse. The problem is that the offset of an ellipse in NOT an ellipse, so the only way is using Make Parallel Path or a similar approach.

Thanks Mark!

Eben Sorkin — Sat, 3 May 2008 23:34:26 -0700

Thanks Mark!

Making the letter "O" even in width all the way around.

Emma Ford — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:33:58 -0700

Hello All,

I am new to typography and I am trying to create a font set with Fontlab. But I am having trouble making the capital letter “O” evenly wide in thickness all the way around.

For example, if I draw the black circle/oval in guidelines of (0,0) to (400,1000) and the white circle/oval in guidelines (100,100) to (300,900) I get an oval shaped “O”. Then the mid-points of “O” i.e. the vertical mid-point measurement from (200,0) to (200,100) and (200,900) to (200,1000) is 100. Similarly the horizontal mid-point measurement from (0,500) to (100,500) and (300,500) to (400,500) is 100. So the width of the character line at these points is 100 but the width of the character line at other parts is not 100.

Does anyone know how to make the “O” even all the way around at 100 units thickness.

Thanks.