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Hello again,
Are there any online resources that deal with character shapes and tips on designing them? I'm looking for something similar to "Designing Type" by Karen Cheng and the tips presented in http://typographica.org/on-typography/making-geometric-type-work/ (optical corrections, balance, and so on).
Besides of the general knowledge I'll get by reading that kind of material, I'm hoping to find info to deal with a problem I'm facing: character "w" in small sizes looks black, heavy, like a dot in a sea of grey lines. I guess there should be some info around regarding this.
Thanks
4 Jan 2013 — 7:46am
There's this:
http://briem.net/
But don't take the chirographic aspects seriously.
Doesn't that Typographica article cover that? You need to apply what's called "modulation" to relieve the optical effect of clotting.
Related: http://themicrofoundry.com/ss_trapping1.html
You should also study Futura (just don't make another one like it).
hhp
4 Jan 2013 — 8:36am
Thanks for the link!
I have applied the principles in Typographica where I deemed necessary, the problem is my letters are very elongated and they look just fine at very big point sizes (the intended use)... so, any correction I make to make the "w" look better at smaller sizes destroys its basic shape and at the normal size you can no longer see the character identity. Maybe one solution is to create a special set for smaller sizes?
4 Jan 2013 — 8:42am
Thanks for the link!
I have applied the principles in Typographica where I deemed necessary, the problem is my letters are very elongated and they look just fine at very big point sizes (the intended use)... so, any correction I make to make the "w" look better at smaller sizes destroys its basic shape and at the normal size you can no longer see the character identity. Maybe one solution is to create a special set for smaller sizes?
4 Jan 2013 — 8:50am
Bingo.
In fact (although some don't agree) a font for text must exhibit a certain ugliness when set large, otherwise it's essentially not optimal for text.
Scale changes everything.
hhp
4 Jan 2013 — 9:02am
That is what I thought. So, at the stage I'm in the font design process, I could basically just forget about the smaller sizes and focus on getting consistency at the "normal" size? Or do type designers typically deal with this optical sizes along with the normal weight design process?
4 Jan 2013 — 10:27am
Most typefaces remain confined to a relatively narrow size range.
hhp