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who fathered the "Ktav" font?
Posted by Yaronimus-Maximus in
13 Oct 2011 — 3:23am
13 Oct 2011 — 3:23am
I've stumbled upon this hebrew type called "Ktav", which is now marketed via Palron & Fontype. it's not impressive untill you understand it's qualities - a good cursive hebrew font with interesting and unique ending letters, rounded structure, and a general graphic language of an ink-written hebrew cursive letters, probably inspired by an actual hebrew cursive sample.
i searched for some info on the designer and found nothing. but i did found an early type sample from palestine (nowadays israel),1922, which featured this font in small sizes for letterpress. so this type was probably designed before 1922.
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13 Oct 2011 — 5:09pm
It's very lively! Look at that final-mem with a big descender.
If "ink written" it would have to be with a brush.
I find it alarming that the descenders can interfere with
the ascenders on the line below. Is this a severe practical problem?
13 Oct 2011 — 5:09pm
It's very lively! Look at that final-mem with a big descender.
If "ink written" it would have to be with a brush.
I find it alarming that the descenders can interfere with
the ascenders on the line below. Is this a severe practical problem?
14 Oct 2011 — 4:54am
well, yea - the big descenders really create a problem, so this font mainly works as a one-liner headline. it's just not working in small sizes or a text block because larg leading is required to avoid collisions, so it seems too big.
14 Oct 2011 — 4:55am
another interesting thing is that the final letters for mem and zadik are so elongated, that they are both descenders and ascenders, which creates a leading problem.
27 Oct 2011 — 5:26pm
they are both descenders and ascenders, which creates a leading problem.
A long descender that reaches into the next line is of course a problem. But a letter that both descends and ascends? Lowercase "j" does that in English all the time, and no one seems to have noticed any problem...
Ah. Since we're dealing with Hebrew, ascenders of any kind are a problem, with or without accompanying descenders, because one is referring to ascenders above cap height, not ascenders above x-height, of which there isn't any.
28 Oct 2011 — 2:55pm
...now, that isn't quite true, of course. There's lamed, after all.