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Expletus Text
Some of you might have already seen that I posted a topic 'Expletus-Sans' in the sans-serif rubric. These are the first 'sketches' for Expletus-Text. I haven't taken care of the spacing and kerning yet. If you like this typeface I hope you can also have a look at my Expletus-Sans post and tell me what you think.
Jasper de Waard
*update: text-sample. Caps and hinting still in progress.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| expletus-textsample.pdf | 17.67 KB |
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24 Jul 2010 — 5:33pm
I love the warmth and playfulness about it, but it's really hard to judge letters like this. Some of the naturally quirky ones (g, r, s, t, z) may or may not be amazing in text/display setting. Can you upload a PDF with some real-life examples?
24 Jul 2010 — 5:51pm
I’m also curious to how those notches actually work in at text size, in print.
For starters: You can add a lot more weight to that r, btw. The eye of g is too heavy and I’m not sure about the top right part of z (mirror it somewhere else perhaps?). That a needs some work.
25 Jul 2010 — 12:49am
The reason why I haven't uploaded any 'real-life' samples is because I think the spacing needs quite some more work. With expletus-sans I found it much easier to do the spacing and (partially) kerning. I guess serif typefaces need more kerning pairs?
I'm not sure about the z either. I'll have to see what that looks like at 8 - 12 pts. The eye of the g is indeed to dark, I'll change that. The a looks fine to me. I'll just soften the inner curve of the bowl a little in a.
From what I know of Expletus Sans, the 'notches, will probably close off.
thanks for your input!
25 Jul 2010 — 4:57am
Expletus is interesting. Your "cut" curves seems to have a better design here than in sans version. Proportions also are very good. I second Frode's observations and also thing g second bowl must be a bit shorter at right.
Kerning is usually the last step on font development. To do tests while you don't have kerning, set your text in InDesign with optical kerning enabled. This usually produces good results for tests and shows possible issues with spacig.
Maybe z angles could benefit from the same curve you adopted in v and w bases.
25 Jul 2010 — 6:02am
The sans and serif 'cut' curves are exactly the same, but Expletus Sans shows the bold and semi-bold two, which have less space for the 'cut'. I think the g is fine, but maybe a view at 9pts will change my mind. I'll leave the kerning. I was already beginning to see it was quite useless, but the 'optical kerning' function in Indesign is just not as good as manual kerning. I guess I'll have to live with it. I don't think your idea in the z will work, but I'll try it anyway.
I'm going on a holliday for 17 days, so I will upoad a pdf with text samples shortly afterwards, since I don't think I will be able to do that today.
Thanks for your input. It's really helpfull.
25 Jul 2010 — 7:31am
My post was not clear as it must. I was referring to curves in the bolder sans. And I don't say you to replace real kerning to InDesign's one. I was talking about a tool to be used during development time. Of course, in a posterior moment you will need to kern the font. But before this the ID optical kerning helps to get a feel.
25 Jul 2010 — 9:19am
Yes, this was all perfectly clear to me, but thanks for making sure.
25 Jul 2010 — 4:01pm
Don't confuse spacing with kerning.
14 Aug 2010 — 1:52am
I added a new attachment. I also changed most glyphs a little bit.
14 Aug 2010 — 6:04pm
I love it!
And I think caps would really help.
15 Aug 2010 — 1:50am
Caps would help indeed. If you are a pro, I think you should have noticed the 's' is to dark, but thanks a lot for your enthousiasm!