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Benedictine Pro Family - Under Development by Alter Littera
Posted by Alter Littera in
14 Feb 2013 — 6:09am
14 Feb 2013 — 6:09am
I have been loving the Benedictine face since I first saw it a few months ago on pages 30-31 of McGrew's American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century. I searched once and again for information about it on the Internet, and, apart from a couple of sample images, I could only find (naturally) an old but quite revealing post on Typophile, and, of course, that wonderful manual on typography by Mergenthaler Linotype from 1923.
Given that no one seems to have carried the remarkable beauty of the Benedictine family (an apparently forgotten gem) into the modern OpenType world, I decided to do it myself ...
The Book weight (including small caps and italics) is almost finished, with Regular and Bold following (hopefully) shortly. For more information (including detailed specimen and sample sheets) please visit alterlittera.com. I would be extremely grateful if you could send your advice on this project.
Thanks in advance.
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15 Feb 2013 — 1:55pm
Great job! Looks true to the original!
2 Mar 2013 — 4:53pm
Thanks for your comment.
Apart from minor glyph additions, the Book Uprights are done. Updated samples and specimen sheets are available at alterlittera.com. The Book Italics will follow in a few weeks.
The more I develop the Benedictine Family, the more I like this beautiful typeface ...
16 Mar 2013 — 11:41am
A small preview of the just-finished Book Roman (more info at alterlittera.com):
Book Italic following soon ...
4 May 2013 — 8:44am
Instead of the Italics, I went for the Regular and Bold weights first. The Book, Regular and Bold Romans (uprights) are now finished (sample characters). Updated details can be found at alterlittera.com.
Thanks again for your interest.
4 May 2013 — 10:37am
I think your wordspace may be too big (though it's hard to tell since all of your specimens are fully justified).
Are the small caps proportions taken from the original source? They look relatively too large to me.
Do those variants come from you or from Linotype?
4 May 2013 — 11:51am
So the three Roman weights are uniwidth* but what about the Italic ones?
* http://typophile.com/node/91519
hhp
4 May 2013 — 12:20pm
Thanks for reading and commenting. Answers to questions posted in this and other threads are as follows:
1. "Wordspace may be too big" - I would be very grateful if you could confirm this by having a look at this sample.
2. "Small caps look relatively too large" - I tried several metrics starting from the original sources, out of which I only retained those for the Book weight. Most of the glyphs (including the small caps) in the Regular and Bold weights were derived mainly from the Book weight. Among other things, the original x-heights of the Regular and Bold seemed too small to me when compared between them and to the x-height of the Book.
3. "I assume the Italics are not uniwidth with the Romans, but are they uniwidth among themselves?" - Yes, they will be. I will also try to make them uniwidth with the Romans. That would be nice, I believe. However, it is not possible to achieve that effect with the original sources (on which the current version of the Book Italics is based).
Thanks.
4 May 2013 — 1:01pm
A traditional Italic would suffer way too much being uniwidth with the Roman.
hhp
4 May 2013 — 1:08pm
Yes, I would narrow the space a bit.
7 May 2013 — 6:33am
Thanks for your comments.
What about this word spacing?
7 May 2013 — 6:34am
Hard to tell in low-res/image.
hhp
7 May 2013 — 6:55am
Sorry. Here you are a PDF sample.
7 May 2013 — 7:52am
Better!
7 May 2013 — 9:43am
Looks pretty solid, at least in that sample. The "ch" and "th" seem a bit tight, and the "va" a bit loose.
BTW, I was going to complain about the "o" being too wide, but: there's a good deal of width variance elsewhere; and I actually believe an "o" that looks a bit too wide is good for reading.
hhp
7 May 2013 — 9:43am
Thanks a lot for your time and for your comments. I will keep posting as work progresses.
Best wishes.
8 May 2013 — 1:13am
Your font looks beautiful! I don't know if you took the letter spacing in small caps like it was in the original source, but to my eye it seems too tight (maybe it's because I got used to more loosely spaced small caps in old books).
8 May 2013 — 9:17am
Thank you.
This sample shows 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 tracking values:
This is my first attempt at a font with small caps. I decided to provide a letter spacing slightly more than proportional with respect to the upper and lower cases, which can be enlarged as desired within the design software. Maybe this is a reasonable move, or maybe not ...
9 May 2013 — 12:09pm
To me the 100% tracking looks good, when small caps are set separately as on your picture. But you should consider that the spacing of small caps also depends on the spacing of upper and lower case letters because they are often used in a context. For example small caps can be used among lower case text to attract attention to a certain word or paragraph (as means of selection) and here the more loosely spaced small caps (comparing to lowercase) will help the word to be distinguished. Also small caps can play the role of lowercase in mixed setting, when the word set in small caps starts with an uppercase letter and here the spacing of small caps should be identical to uppercase, because they stand together in the same word. Also small caps can be used among the uppercase text (for example in a book title) and it is a common practice to use some tracking in uppercase setting (which can be programmed in a font with the “cpsp” feature) so if you make such feature you should consider this too when deciding on the spacing of small caps (for the harmony between small caps and tracked uppercase). So there can be different situations and you can leave the spacing of your small caps as it is and let a designer who'll use your font to decide on tracking or try yourself find the spacing of small caps which will suit most of situations.