Developing a nice terminal for horizontals seems to be the missing piece of the puzzle here. Top of /3/ and /7/ seem out of character to me--they look like graffiti scrawling. And as you say the bottom terminal of /2/ isn't there yet (and that solution when it comes could help you with /Z/ and maybe /E/ and /L/ too). Maybe get your brush pen back out and experiment to find new shape ideas.

Oof. I quite like it. What's not working for you?

It's a little rough but here's some initial scrawl-and-scans with the brush pen. Are any of these headed in the direction you're thinking?

/8/ conversation fodder:

I suspect that would look really odd. I think A works well.

To virtually all type designers, certainly. But I think not only
would laymen not notice anything funny, they would actually
benefit from the divergence from the "S" (my only reason for
recommending flipping).

But I agree that the "A" choice works, and it might also be
worth closing either the top or bottom of the "B" choice.

hhp

The top of the "Z" bugs me a little, but maybe it fits in your scheme.
I like the "2", but it might be better to make the top counter appear
smaller than the bottom (probably by moving the spine up). The "L"
should be narrower than the "E".

hhp

-sharper angles on top of /7/Z/
-tighter curl at top of /c/C/G/2/
-narrower /L/

I still dont really like that E and alikes, so now I'm thinking maybe you should add that same 'serif' as Z has to the E and alikes.

Pardon my disappearance. I've been in ligature-land, building the rest of this thing out. I'll still take a look at those serif issues but in the meantime have a look through the rest of these glyphs. I'm pretty excited about the stylistic sets. Here's some over-the-top, swashy examples:

Piquant/Blancmange 32

(thx Minerva)

Agreed. This is looking great. These recent embellishments are miles ahead of your first attempts.

Hmm. Agreed.

I can do that. Wasn't sure how much demand there would be for that. Some glyphs probably won't allow for certain accents etc.

Trying to get the color right on these numerals:

That /8/ still bothers me.

In my perfect world, there would be a light and bold face (maybe even an accompanying text face) but am not sure how long that would all take. I can try out some bold glyphs and see if it's worth pursuing.

Certainly!

I'm doing all this by hand, so...not yet. If I had known I would have made light/bold masters and let software do the in-between. I'll play with it. See how it looks.

A peek at the bold under construction:

That's no Bold, that's a Demi!
With the Bold, go hog-wild.

hhp

OK, OK, it's a Bold (but not more).
But with the Black do go feral porcine.

hhp

So there's essentially two types of terminals I'm trying to reconcile here. A "thin" one, like at the top of the /a/ and a bulbous one, like on the top of the /c/. What to do when blowing it up real fat? Any thoughts on some of these options:

For /a/ go with nr 2.
For /c/ go somewhere between 1 and 2.
Why did you make the joint at the bottom of /a/ thicker? I prefered the previous one.

Hrant. Explain.

That's the Typophile humor we should all by paying money for.

If you extrapolate out the curves from the original weight, you get this:

Looks unorthodox but it seems true to the design. Thoughts?

Cool! In all styles you made so far, the bottom right of /c/ needs to be moved to the left a bit. It's falling backwards...

The main UC and LC. No ligatures or numerals just yet.

Blancmange Bold 04

/t/ looks short compared to the ascenders.
/T/ looks light.
Some of the tall vertical strokes might be a little stiff looking. Is there a way to soften up those straight (or nearly straight) contours?
/s/ looks a little out of character - maybe too wide, too symmetrical, too smooth?