This would make an interesting study. At the time, printing, let alone creating a typeface, was expensive. I don’t recall how far abroad the Latin alphabet was at this time, it post-dates the period of the incunable, but not by much.

Do you think those caps were placeholders? They look more Roman than Italic to me.

monster x-height

...other than JG, 60 years earlier?

Yup, other than the Goths (and Griffo used, as everyone did until rather later, roman caps with italic miniscules).

> Do you think those caps were placeholders? They look more Roman than Italic to me.

That’s because the caps were Roman, as it was the convention in early use of italics. From time to time you still see it.

For comparison, this is Griffo’s previous italic, made for and printed by Gershom Soncino in 1503, at roughly the same magnification. I think this is the most beautiful of all Renaissance italics.

Pardon me,
Some Questions:
who is Gershom Soncino?
and what did he print?
and what is the subject of this book?

Gershom Soncino was the most technically capable printer of the early C16th, and he issued excellent editions of the classics and of Jewish material. He worked from the little town of Fano, and had his first types (Hebrew and italic) cut by Griffo, after the latter fell out with Aldus Manutius. This is Petrarch’s ’Opere Volgari’, the first book, I think, printed from the new italic.

Would you mind adding that to the wiki, or should I?
also, is the historical soncino press named after him?
or is it tied to him in other ways?
where could I read more on this subject?

More on Soncino here.

The modern Soncino Press has published the massive English translation of the Talmud—printed in van Krimpen’s Spectrum typeface.

Nice find. Your measurement indicates that the type was about 7 point. In looking for a previous font with a larger x-height, I’d recommend tracking down previous fonts of smaller point sizes! :-)

BTW, I noticed on your fourth line an open-bottom bicameral “g”!
That’s the earliest I’ve seen that form occur in type. But I have to
wonder whether that particular impression was damaged; could you
let me know if all the “g”s in that printing have that structure?

hhp

It feels like an 80s ITC Griffo with that large x-height :-)

ChrisL

PS: I know Norbert is going to get me for that :-)

Psachyah, I’m no Soncino scholar though I’d be happy to put a note in on him if you wanted. He doesn’t come up very often though, not having had any substantial influence, even purely typographic influence, outside the Jewish community. In printing Greek, Latin and Italian, Aldus set the trends and Soncino copied him. He just did it better.

Chris, that was my exactly my reaction! It looks like a Tony Stan take on the 1503 italic. I think only half a dozen or so copies of books printed by Griffo survive (he didn’t get much done, what with being executed for murder a year after starting up), and it took months and an absurd amount of money for me to secure scans of two pages, so it was almost embarrassing to find such a homely thing. But nice work for someone probably with failing sight and no magnifying lens.

Hrant, good question. I’m not sure: either the loop tapers to a point which just touches the, um, other bit, or it really is Baskervillian.

Do you think those caps were placeholders? They look more Roman than Italic to me.

That’s because the caps were Roman, as it was the convention in early use of italics. From time to time you still see it.

I seem to remember reading somewhere (Printing Types...?) that the italic upper case didn’t appear until a couple of decades later, and as bootlegs of sorts – someone copied Griffos italics and added upper case letters themselves. Previous to that, as in the ones in the example, they used small caps.

ƒ

It looks open to me. But you’re right, one can’t be sure.
Like if the matrix wasn’t struck hard enough all the
“g”s would have been contrary to Griffo’s “intent”.

BTW, there is actually an unequivocal precedent to Bville’s “g”:

hhp

I like the narrow vdKeere-style h, but have always disapproved of open gs in text faces - is there any reason to prefer them?

Looking at Harry Carter on Soncino, Aldus and Griffo, I was very amused by the following:

“After asserting that Francesco [da Bologna] had not only designed and cut the cursive, but had conceived the idea of it, [Gershom] Soncino claims that the punchcutter had been responsible for all the types that Aldus had printed, and that he had made Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Francesco, whose family name was Griffo,...in 1516 repeats the claims that Soncino had made for him and accuses Aldus of taking the credit for his work.”

Plus ça change...

Hrant,

Did you put that scroll bar in your post or did it just happen automatically by the site?

ChrisL

I did nothing special actually. It’s cool though huh?

hhp

Typophile was ’down’ half an hour ago. I bet the powers have provided the scroll bars as a gift. Praise to the typogods!

Well at least it was the typogods and not the Dead Sea Scroll :-)

ChrisL

“Does anyone know about other early experiments with monster x-height?”

It would be a good guess, that “in the beginning” some took larger sizes, and “cut them down” to work with smaller sizes of caps, something that the first image in this thread is not at all... out of sorts with, so to speak.

I’d recommend tracking down previous fonts of smaller point sizes!
I’ve only just realised something: wasn’t Haultin meant to be the first person to make sub-9/10 point type? If so, this would knock him right out of the niche-interest record book. And the modelling of the type actually looks very good, though Griffo seems not to have been a great pressman.

It would be a good guess, that “in the beginning” some took larger sizes, and “cut them down” to work with smaller sizes of caps, something that the first image in this thread is not at all… out of sorts with, so to speak.
The 1516 type would have been designed all of a piece, because it was made to start a new press. Short caps, made to blend nicely with the lowercase and especially useful before the advent of small caps, constitute a normal feature of Griffo’s types.

Although “the 1516 type would have been designed all of a piece,” is it possible that Griffo did not start from scratch but employed existing counter punches on a smaller body? The only problematic lower case character in that scenario would have been the ’g,’ and the open loop—I admit I’m stretching here—might be a solution to maintaining an adequate counter in the diminished space available for the descender.

No, Griffo didn’t use counterpunches. No counter is repeated perfectly in a font - even the counters on ligatured versions of letters are different from the standard forms, and the two halves of an m likewise. Part of Griffo’s interest is that, like the makers of Venetians, he believed in divergence, but his proportions and modelling are typographic rather than calligraphic - much more sophisticatedly so, indeed, than Garamond’s.

> have always disapproved of open gs in text
> faces - is there any reason to prefer them?

I’ve come to believe that there is: it’s much more harmonious with the “spirit” of the Latin lowercase as a whole; the conventional (closed) form is really too complex; especially when it’s doubled it can cause a distracting spike in the texture. The way I see it, the only really valid reason to use the conventional form is: if you want the font to be as conservative as possible; or if you believe Familiarity takes a very very long time to settle down, and readers are almost inherently used to the closed form even if it has a “belonging” problem.

In any case, the open form couldn’t be as bad as the narrowness of
that “h” that you favor. :-> (That there is a display font though.)

BTW, just to be clear: I’m not talking about the monocameral open form,
but the bi. The mono form is way too homogenous (in terms of readability).

> might be a solution to maintaining an adequate counter

Yes, that might be it.

hhp

> a distracting spike in the texture

I think this depends on how the counters are shaped and strokes weighted. I think either way can work, or not work, depending on how it is drawn. That being said, I do tend to find most open binocular g’s unpleasantly distracting. Baskerville’s is just fine, but then it is not very open.

The conventional (closed) form is really too complex
The opposite seems true for me, at least in the pointed-pen Baskerville-style squiggle, which is a black form that’s lost its purpose in defining a white one. But you’re right, it is an odd place to put a counter, and g (thanks to Griffo’s reduction of the top story’s size) doesn’t really need a second counter for differentiation’s sake.

That h would be unforgivable in text, but it’s very smart there. I hope the w is nice and wide to match, as in Deepdene.

To me Baskerville’s -at least the way it’s
typically revived- is not “the real thing”.

hhp

Guys, get over it, this is the 21st century.

Hrant, what do you think is the real thing, for a basically-Garalde small text type, roman and italic?

Nick, the book I just put down to see your comment is ’The World We Have Lost’! I don’t think we’re going to agree on this. I think you retain a minor-Modernist nostalgia for the present day :-)

That emoticon is a double concession: it’s the first I’ve ever used, and I feel soiled.

I don’t mind Nick saying such things.
But I do mind him not saying it to
certain individuals, like Hoefler.

> what do you think is the real thing

Anything that’s not apologetic (like most Baskervilles and Meta) but not cartoonish (like Cheltenham). I like the ones in Fountain’s Baskerville, that Voskens, B&R#1/Oxford/Monticello, Zapf International’s italic, Patria. Preferably with a strong terminal (at least in a serif face, but we’re talking about text anyway) and definitely an obvious gap. I also prefer the top of the bottom bowl to not be uniformly thick, and certainly not totally horizontal. Like the one in Enigma is almost there.

> it’s the first I’ve ever used, and I feel soiled.

Don’t feel too bad - like any tool, they can be useful.

hhp

Nick saying such things.

I guess I should start some threads on new type designs, but I have a feeling they wouldn’t stir as much interest as Akzidenz Grotesk, The Mystery of Steile Futura, Caslon, Baskerville, Griffo etc.

So much of the mystery is in the space between technologies.

like Hoefler.

I would like everyone, including you and I, to attempt greatness, quantum jumps like Futura, Palatino, Frutiger. But it’s not easy, and so much is being in the right place at the right time, which is not immediately under one’s control.

> I have a feeling they wouldn’t stir as much interest

If they don’t stir much interest here and now, with the
communicative power of the internet to boot, how can they
stir interest in the broader world, centuries or even just
decades down the line? If they don’t stir interest, maybe
it’s because they’re not interesting. And I posit that the
great bulk of typefaces are not interesting because they’re
mostly expressions of the designer’s personal preferences,
something nobody cares about, or really needs to. When a
typeface is interesting, I feel it’s because it transcends
the designer and becomes evocative of something that’s
actually important.

Think for example of all the times Legato comes up and
generates such great discourse. I think it’s because it
tries to answer a question that has been consistently
posed but just as consistently given mere lip service:
the central role of notan in type.

> so much is being in the right place at the right time

Very true. But so much more is what different
people believe, with the candid confrontation
between them being the fuel of cultural progress.

hhp

For old-timers, impersonal greatness is the best goal, but I think the route to it lies through competence and the accurate knowledge of one’s personality within the specific field. I am, at the moment, an incompetent type designer, but producing a revival at Reading should change that; it’ll also help me pin down exactly what I think great and also personally resonant in Griffo’s stuff - which has never been accurately revived and which deserves a numble servant to give it an honest representation to the world now. If greatness is Futura - lovely caps, pitiful lowercase - and Palatino - nicely modelled but really the opposite of civilised - then I’m not very interested.

“The 1516 type would have been designed all of a piece, because it was made to start a new press.”

...several leaps of faith.

“producing a revival at Reading should change that”

That imho, depends on whether you keep your eyes and ears open wide to let your mind out into a 490 yr old pasture. If not, and you let your assumptions run in 2006 mode, we might never hear of you again, I’m afraid ;)

Is Reading really such a magic bullett? Perhaps it is more what you bring to it rather than what you take from it?

ChrisL

Hi David, I’ve enjoyed gambolling around this pasture for several months, and have found that the effort to accept whatever Griffo made has consistently been rewarded by a new or strengthened perception of its excellence. And one’s eventual feelings about what actually exists are always more reliable than those about what might exist - which is a reason for literal revivals.

The evidence that the 1516er was designed all of a piece is as good as you’re going to find in this period. There was certainly a press, Griffo’s first; and he would have had no opportunity to use type made beforehand, and so no motive to make it (rather than, say, imagine it in detail, or even draw it).

Chris, Reading’s not a magic bullet, but criticism there should greatly accelerate the learning process. I’d have made this revival privately had Reading not existed, but I expect I’d have needed to take it through two or three generations and several years of trial and error before it became satisfactory.

George,
The beauty of going to a grad school situation, and a fine one like Reading, is the community interaction of your peers there as much as the faculty. You bring your passion and love for the craft and that value will be available to your colleagues there as much as any other. Don’t be afraid to question everything you hear—not to be argumentative but to get the speaker to clarify and bring support to what they say. Dialogue is the most precious commodity in school. Drink it in and pour some of your own for others. You are not going to Reading to be fixed, you are not broken. You are going there to participate in everyone’s growth including your own.

I am sorry to sound like a verbose old man. Go there as a partner in learning and be who you are.

ChrisL

Lovely advice; thanks Chris.

Hrant, thanks for those pointers. I can see the point of something like the enigma g but with the curling loop hitting an angle and going rigid; but it’d have to be really good to be worth the loss of the familiar and satisfying counterpoint between top and bottom stories, as in the 1503 version.

> the familiar and satisfying

Do we really think laymen (as opposed to type designers who mostly naturally enjoy getting used to explicit features) are so -consciously no less- familiar with and satisfied by the closed form that they can’t start reaping the benefits of the open form within an hour or whatever of first encountering it in a given text? It seems implausible to me. For example, when I show Patria to non—type-designers, nobody ever says anything about the “g”. Most of them actually get embarassed because they have nothing to say about the face, good or bad - it’s just another Times to them - but of course that “transparency” is the first hurdle for a text face.

hhp

Come come Hrant, you’re usually the one who argues that those kind of details have a functional effect on immersive reading, whether or not they are deliberatively noticed.

And I’ve been saying that the closed form is in fact worse
for immersive reading, even if it has a slight “head start”
in terms of Familiarity. Also, I’ve been objecting to the
idea that the open form never gets a chance to become
familiar because the reader consciously rejects it.

hhp

Hrant, isn’t the area around the gap in the Voskens g one of too-high contrast, since thick black meets white meets thick black over such a short distance? It becomes the loudest bit of the letter, pulling it off-balance. I suppose that’s arguable with vertical stress, but given the normal oblique stress of a Garalde, wouldn’t one prefer the opening to be on the right rather than the left?

I agree that the terminal/gap balancing in the Voskens is a bit off.
There are other things I’d change too (especially if I were making
a text face). But at least it knows what it wants, unlike the “g” in
most Baskerville revivals (although I should note that revivals
of the Fry’s Baskerville tend to have it much more gutsy).

> Given the normal oblique stress of a Garalde, wouldn’t one
> prefer the opening to be on the right rather than the left?

Well, first of all I’m no fan of slavish adherence to ductus,
quite the opposite. But let ask: do you actually mean that
the gap should be on the right end of the lower bowl?

hhp

I mean a large opening on the right hand side of the lower bowl.

Personally, I think the only really successful lc roman g design aside from the closed binocular and typical monocular open one is Koch’s g in Kabel. (Not including blackletter or italic.) The open tails that are very discrete, like Baskerville’s, basically don’t change the color. When they get prominent, like Meta’s, I find them a bit distracting. Acceptable, but not really a success.

I’ll second that, William. I’ve always disliked open bowls. I find them distracting and very rarely designed with much subtlety.

hrant ranted:

I’ve come to believe that there is: it’s much more harmonious with the “spirit” of the Latin lowercase as a whole; the conventional (closed) form is really too complex; especially when it’s doubled it can cause a distracting spike in the texture.

This evaluation seems a bit subjective to me. I’m not sure if there’s any good literature on measuring complexity (Peter Enneson’s “role architecture” concepts are the only thing that come immediately to mind), but in my seat-of-the-pants count, a Baskerville style lachrymal lower g bowl has one more thing to count than a traditional garalde: in the latter, you have the ’T’ join where the bowl closes, and in the former you have both the lachrymal terminal and the gap between that terminal and the main stroke.

An open ’g’ in a sharp lineale such as Meta is even worse (by my rough counting scheme), because now you’ve got two sharp corners on the terminal, and they don’t register as symmetrical because their role is so different.

Do we really think laymen (as opposed to type designers who mostly naturally enjoy getting used to explicit features) are so -consciously no less- familiar with and satisfied by the closed form...

I tested both the binocular and the sesquiocular (Meta-like) ’g’ forms in Inconsolata on a bunch of laypersons, and latter always stood out as one of the first things they’d complain about. I was tempted by the sesquiocular form because I felt that the requirements of a monospace font exert a lot of pressure to take away black in the ’g’ to avoid unevenness of color, and that the join of the lower bowl was one such place. Ultimately, I decided that the binocular form worked better, and now it’s one of my favorite glyphs from the whole font - and something of a signature character for the font because so many of the glyphs are pretty vanilla.

As for whether the Baskervillian sesquiocular form is superior in immersive reading, that sounds like an empirical claim, and I’m going to want to see empirical evidence before I really believe it. I’m not saying that tradition is always good, but you had a lot of really brilliant type designers (and type design engineers, I would say, who sought practical readability as the primary goal as opposed to a merely aesthetic impression) over the last few hundred years, and there’s a pretty strong consensus. Of course, Mr. Eaves himself definitely qualifies as a brilliant type design engineer, but maybe he’s the exception that proves the rule.

Among the ATF designs from the Benton era, a very few used a sesquiocular g - Cheltenham, which was an adaptation of an earlier, somewhat bletcherous font; the ATF Baskerville of course; Souvenir (which isn’t exactly sesquiocular, but isn’t standardly monocular either), and some oddballs such as Hobo. (I don’t have the catalogs in front of me to flip through, otherwise I’d probably find one or two classic Art Nouveau faces with interesting ’g’ shapes).

> I mean a large opening on the right hand side of the lower bowl.

Wow. I can’t see how to make that work.
But I’d encourage you to give it a shot.
For one thing it might make the “g”
face the “right” way.

> Koch’s g in Kabel

I love that one (especially for tiny screen type, strangely enough).

> When they get prominent, like Meta’s

I think Meta’s is pretty apologetic. But it
does have a funny whitespace in there,
and maybe that’s what’s getting you.

> very rarely designed with much subtlety

There I agree.
Unless you’re looking for elegance, in which
case I’d say: don’t look for too much of that
in a text face.

hhp

George:
“the effort to accept whatever Griffo made has consistently been rewarded by a new or strengthened perception of its excellence”

But remember, what you are looking at is not what he “made”, but what “survived”.

” And one’s eventual feelings about what actually exists are always more reliable than those about what might exist - which is a reason for literal revivals.”

This statement makes total and complete sense, if your revival is metal. Otherwise, it’s a slight increase in global warming.

“The evidence that the 1516er was designed all of a piece is as good as you’re going to find in this period.”

Oh good, that means you have the punches and/or the type, and receipts for their purchase, sale or creation?

what you are looking at is not what he “made”, but what “survived”.
True, and more of your type scat info would be really helpful; but what survives contains information sufficient for us to determine the printed impresions Griffo could, with perfect knowledge of his craft, have expected his types to make, within a normally small but at any specific point unknowable range of error.
There’s an element of global warming in “one’s eventual feelings about what actually exists are always more reliable than those about what might exist - which is a reason for literal revivals” but, since I care about making a good photopolymer version rather more than making a good offset version, I don’t think there’s any proven reason to get fundamentalist about this. I don’t count scat as essential to the value of letterpress, it irritates me.
Oh good, that means you have the punches and/or the type, and receipts for their purchase, sale or creation?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t think any of that survives from before De Colines.

> This evaluation seems a bit subjective to me.

Well, a bit (i.e. in part) sure - I’m human too. But it’s also based on reasoning. One way to measure complexity is good ol’ topology: only the “B” is as complex as the traditional “g”, and at least it has its two counters abutting. Another way to evaluate -if not measure- complexity is to just look at the thing. It almost looks like a Chinese logograph.

> latter always stood out

Let’s see it.

Interestingly, I couldn’t make a nice open “g” for
Coda [either]. Hmmm, something in the mono water?
Oh wait, I know what it is: the sceen’s coarseness.

> the requirements of a monospace font exert a lot of pressure to take away black

On the other hand, especially in mono fonts the “g” tends to look smallish (because making it look nice gives is it a small head) and making it darkish can help.

> that sounds like an empirical claim

How could it, when there’s no data?
It’s a design judgement (but based on more than just my whims).

> Mr. Eaves himself definitely qualifies as a brilliant type design engineer

Richard was a type designer?!

> Cheltenham, which was an adaptation of an earlier, somewhat bletcherous font

What font is that?

BTW, if I remember correctly, the original ATF Clearface -a design which Bullen claimed was the first font designed “scientifically” for high legibility mind you- had an open “g”...

hhp

Ciao!
I was born in a town close to Soncino the town where Soncino family lived and worked.
Soncino family printed the first bible in jewish.
http://www.storiadellastampa.unibo.it/noframes/soncino.html
If you go to Italy go and visit the museum and the press of Soncino... in Soncino close to Cremona (north of Italy)

My favorite typeface of the renaissance was the one designed by Luca Pacioli. He designed it using the golden section.
From that font Garamond designed the “Garamond” typeface and from that one Simoncini re-designed the “Simoncini Garamond” (which as a beautiful italic)

Ciao again

Hello Laura!
Yes, I’ve seen the website for this museum. Has it got any particular typographic goodies or information on Soncino as a typographer?
Your history of type is quite new-school: it’s Jannon you want to look up if you like (very sensibly) Simoncini Garamond.

Ciao Gio!
At the museum you can find all of sort of things... When my school took us there i remember my professor of typography explaining how much “particular” Soncino was in the details. He wanted everything perfect. He chose Griffo as the best punchcutter. He had to have the best inks and the best paper, etc. The research confirms that because of his high quality today we can still admire his work.
My father was a typographer handsetting for almost 40 years... so i have ink of my hands since i was 5... Thanks to that i had the opportunity to know many stories in the typography world in Italy, especially north of Italy.
In 1989 i had the opportunity to design an antology exhibition about Giovanni Mardersteig (1872-1977) and during that period i had the opportunity to view his archive... see how he designed fonts... sketches, notes, letters to other type-designers, etc. I also discovered that when he was designing the font Dante at some point he get sick and he could not go to Milano (from Verona) to view the progress of the work. The typography was the one where my father worked! and becuase my father was also a good designer, Mardersteig sent a letter asking to my father to design the letter “e” for him... to not stop the work in the foundary.
At the archive of Mardersteig i also could see many protopyes (in pear wood) of letters designed by Bodoni.

Thanks for the suggestion you gave me, i will go to look for Jannon.

One way to measure complexity is good ol’ topology:

Excuse me, but that’s preposterous. By this metric, ’m’ is simpler than ’o’. Try to make your argument again with a complexity metric that I can take seriously.

Let’s see it.

Flash player 8 for Linux isn’t out yet, so a link instead of an “insert image”.

How could it, when there’s no data?

Ok, then I take back what I first said. It sounds like an empirical claim with no data to support it.

What font is that?

The one that Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in 1896 for the Cheltenham press. I’m just trying to assign the blame to Goodhue rather than to my role model Benton, as I can’t bring myself to believe that my hero would be capable of creating such a thing from whole cloth.

BTW, if I remember correctly, the original ATF Clearface -a design which Bullen claimed was the first font designed “scientifically” for high legibility mind you- had an open “g”…

Yes, a plain monocular one, which I’m sure we’d all agree is simpler than both the binocular and sesquiocular forms.

Laura Ruggeri wrote:

In 1989 i had the opportunity to design an antology exhibition about Giovanni Mardersteig (1872-1977) and during that period i had the opportunity to view his archive… see how he designed fonts… sketches, notes, letters to other type-designers, etc.

Wow, that sounds like an incredible opportunity. I’m very interested in Mardersteig’s Zeno font, for which there is currently no digitization. Could you possible be able to help me out with my queries from this thread on Zeno?

Topology is a measure, not the only/best one. It’s classically useful, and not inferior to your element-counting method, since that clearly failed here in revealing the over-complexity of the closed “g”. :-)

> a link instead of an “insert image”.

The head is too big.
That shape wouldn’t look nice even if you closed the bottom.

> It sounds like an empirical claim

Claiming the open “g” is generally better than the closed one for immersive reading is “empirical”? I guess I’ll take your word for it (pardon the pun).

> The one that Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in 1896 for the Cheltenham press.

I thought that was pretty much the same as Cheltenham. Sample?

> I’m just trying to assign the blame to Goodhue

Blame for Cheltenham, or the earlier one?
Many people don’t like Cheltenham, while
many others admire it. I guess you’re in
the former camp?

> Yes, a plain monocular one

You’re sure it wasn’t an open binocular?
Let me try to track down what I think I’ve seen...

hhp

Does anybody have a copy of Ch Perfect’s “The Complete Typographer” handy?
I can’t seem to locate mine, and I think that’s where I saw the Clearface with the
open bino “g”.

hhp

The 1516 g, averaged from 17 impressions and sharpened:

Way cool. Looks like Enigma’s! :-)

BTW, that white “incision” a the bottom-right,
do you think it means you’ve actually averaged
two separate designs/matrices for the “g”?

hhp

Oddly, no: it’s a real feature of all the printed letters. One nice thing about averaging is that it shows you things to look for that you would never ordinarily have seen in the scanned imprints: one filters out everything that isn’t obviously role-architectural, because it’s perceived as just noise. That side of the lower bowl is either very sophisticated differentiation or a booboo.

> nice thing about averaging

Indeed.
Virtually any designer would have normalized that,
and hence deviated from what the type in effect was.

> or a booboo.

Yeah, that one. Across the centuries I can almost
hear Griffo cursing, when the matrix slipped from
his hand and hit that damn nail in the floorboards. :-)

hhp

I had to gallop through this thread, so may have missed some things (I’ll return to it), but the operative question about the binocular ’g’ has to be—to my mind at least—what has criterial cue-value toward visual wordform resolution here: closure, or the presence of a counter. I’ll bet it’s the latter. Perfect closure is probably secondary, but more than the typical monocular ’g’ might be beneficial.

The problem with the binocular ’g’ is managing the saliencies around the closure point of the lower bowl so the right things (the counters) have a proper and properly coordinated cue or pop-out value / aren’t compromised by the density of black action between the monocles. Or is the ’disturbed expressedness’ in that area one of the things we depend on in visual wordform resolution?

(Not an answer, but a playing field for addressing the issue)

> more than the typical monocular ‘g’ might be beneficial.

I’d say that the [typical*] monocular “g”
has a bigger problem than lack of closure.

* But what do we think of the Eric Gill italic “g”?

> Or is the ‘disturbed expressedness’ in that area one of
> the things we depend on in visual wordform resolution?

If it is, then we better be doing that to a lot
more than just the “g”... Are we ready for that?

hhp

Previously:
> I mean a large opening on the right hand side of the lower bowl.

Hey, check THIS out:

It’s from Cheng’s book. I’d never seen “g”s
like that. And I’m not sure they don’t work.

hhp

Thanks for this Hrant. What I would like to play with is most like the first g on the second line, but with the lower half rotated counter-clockwise about its centre say 10 degrees, pulled a touch away from the upper half, and its horizontals extended a little. (And also with a Plantin-style ear, 3:1 contrast and the upper half reduced in size).

“The problem with the binocular ‘g’ is managing the saliencies around the closure point of the lower bowl so the right things (the counters) have a proper and properly coordinated cue or pop-out value / aren’t compromised by the density of black action between the monocles.”

Exactly, and since most g’s of this sort contain two quite different oculii, the point becomes less valid the more different they are, more valid as they befome truely binocularesque.

So that means the top counter of the (binocular) “a” should be closed too? After all, it used to be (think blackletter). But we got over it. Let’s do it for the “g” too.

BTW, yesterday I realized another way the open-bottom “g” can get better integrated into the whole of a face is that it has a terminal, whose shape can be like other terminal shapes (like in the “s”). I think this is significant.

—

Some people prefer the conventional binocular “g” because they’re conservative. But other people who don’t have that problem who nonetheles prefer it I think are discouraged by all the cruddy open-bottom binocular “g”s out there; type design is in large part about imitation, and there are simply far fewer good examples to emulate. It’s easier to make a good closed-bottom “g” because there are already good ones out there. But its birth defect will not allow it to run the marathon. At least not without coffee breaks.

hhp

“But its birth defect will not allow it to run the marathon. At least not without coffee breaks.”

What???

A binocular g with a closed bottom no serifs, and no fancy terminals is a reader’s g. That, is why there are so many around.The others, nice or follimous as they are, are designer g’s.

> That, is why there are so many around.

You really think that designers have been minding subtle readability advantages? I think they’ve mostly just been following fashion - which I do agree is the motivation for the open “g” for most people - just not all of us.

hhp

”...I think they’ve mostly just been following fashion - which I do agree is the motivation for the open “g” for most people...”

I didn’t know it was fashionable. Everytime I post a face with an open bowl g, I get comments from folks who want it closed. It must be a very secret fashion that nobody has heard about :-)

ChrisL

Like I said, it’s hard[er] to make a good open one... :-)

hhp

Yet more interesting -and not unpleasant- “g”s:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/transkrypt/superia/

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/letraset/brighton/

hhp

What about an unslanted Dante italic g, with weight taken from the chirographic swell on the upper right of the top circle and used as polyfiller (sp?) on the join with the ear, smoothing that transation while morphing the modelling of the circle into something like its counterpart in Electra?

Uh, pitchur please.

hhp

Drawn quickly, on a touchpad, with the paintbrush tool of the Gimp - it’s nasty -