PW-Blacker Grotesk

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by PhuWorks (Phú Real)

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P U B L I S H E D   O N   N O V E M B E R   1 8 ,   2 0 2 5
╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾╾

PW-Blacker Grotesk — a heavy geometric sans-serif font with robust language support. Capital-only.

This font also contains full 3-square-root characters: √, ∛, ∜.

Fractions can also be typed in this font
Syntax fraction typing: [superscript][fraction slash][subscript]
Example: "¹²⁄₃₄₅", while "¹²" is a superscript, " ⁄ " is a fraction slash, and "₃₄₅" is a subscript.

Over 100 language support: Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Chechen, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Greek, Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Breton, Catalan, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, Ganda, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Inari Sami, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, Northern Sami, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish Gaelic, Sena, Serbian, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkish, Upper Sorbian, Uzbek (Latin), Vietnamese, Volapük, Vunjo, Walser, Welsh, Western Frisian, Zulu

Please share your thoughts on this font in the comments.

39 Comments

Here's a sample of my font with a short paragraph I wrote. I created this image using PowerPoint. Additionally, this image contains unicase characters from a "Private Use Area" block of this font.

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Wed, 19th november

The white color of the characters in this image indicates that they are unicase characters, which are located in a "Private Use Area" Unicode block.

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Wed, 19th november

Here's a snapshot of all characters in my font

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Wed, 19th november
Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Wed, 19th november
Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Wed, 19th november

Nice work. I like the unicase way.

Comment by elmoyenique Wed, 19th november

@elmoyenique: Thank you for your kind words! The use of unicase characters has become increasingly popular in various contexts.

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Wed, 19th november

Here's a detail of this font

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Wed, 19th november
Congratulations! FontStruct Staff have deemed your FontStruction worthy of special mention. “PW-Blacker Grotesk” is now a Top Pick.
Comment by Rob Meek (meek) Wed, 19th november

A heavy sans-serif all-caps font, with robust language support; quite a big endeavour. I have several suggestions for improving this work.

Latin set

The letters and numbers look OK with a few exceptions. The capital I doesn't need serifs. It seems odd in this font design. Number 4 looks narrower than the others. This font is not monospaced; you have the liberty to make it wider.

The comma and the period don't match. Rounded or rectangular, they should share the same design.

The bars, strokes and slashes should be consistent across the whole set; these glyphs ($ ¢ £ € ¥ Ð ð đ Ø ø Ħ Ł ł Ŧ ŧ ƀ ђ ћ and more) share strokes with the same style and width.

The section (§) and pilcrow sign (¶) usually go below the baseline.

Diacritical marks: The umlaut/diaresis is tiny. Make it bigger. The cedilla and ogonek are way too big and lack detail. There are more issues I didn't mention for the sake of brevity. [In this blog - Society of Fonts - you will find all details for correct punctuation and diacritics ]

Cyrillic set

The Ф is too big; it should stay within the caps zone. The Ћ and Ђ (from Serbian) are basically capital T letters with some added parts.

Unicase letters are tucked away in the Private Use Area, where nobody will find them. You may simply place them in the lowercase section.

Demo samples look great.

Comment by Frodo7 Wed, 19th november

Congrats on the TP! I agree with Master Frodo7 regarding the opinions and improvements he mentioned for the font. Personally, I greatly value his explanations and suggestions, which have always improved my work.

Comment by elmoyenique Wed, 19th november

@Rob Meek (meek): Thank you very much, boss!

@elmoyenique: Thank you!

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

From Frodo7's suggestions, the unicase letter was placed from the Private Use Area to the lowercase section

For some people who like typing with unicase, you can type with lowercase, and for some people who don't like typing with unicase, you can type with uppercase.

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

@Frodo7: Thank you for your suggestions!

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

Some sans serif fonts, like Verdana and this one at the time of writing this, have the bars on the capital I so as to distinguish it from the lowercase l, like in Ill, Illinois, and Illiad.

P.S. Kazakh has Ь, І, and Ы, but I'm not sure if two letter sequence ЬІ occurs in any Kazakh words…

Comment by Bryndan W. Meyerholt (BWM) Thu, 20th november

From Frodo7's suggestions, I edited a Ф character (for both Greek & Cyrillic) to stay within the capital zone.

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

I know that the uppercase "i" serif type is optional, but I keep the uppercase "i" as a serif type so it can be distinguished clearly.

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

@PhuWorks (Phú Real): The rules of typeface design are not set in stone. They can be bent or broken. You need a deep understanding of the (Latin or Cyrillic) script to know when to break the rules. Supporting so many languages is very challenging. Usually, I don't create the entire Extended Latin A or B panel; instead, I go through the different languages one by one and consider each language's special needs for accented characters. I also find genuine text samples of that particular language and learn how those accented characters are integrated into the text.

Your design is heavy; that may not leave enough room for all the special letters. I often struggle with Serbian support. The Ћ, ћ and Ђ, ђ need more space for their special parts than my design can accommodate. In that case, I have to drop language support and hope my Serbian brothers and sisters will understand. Sometimes less is more.

You are indeed very brave to support Vietnamese.

@Bryndan W. Meyerholt (BWM): The Ы is a separate letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It is the hard pair of the soft И. (Likewise, the А and Я; Э and E, etc., are hard-soft pairs of the same vowels.)

Comment by Frodo7 Thu, 20th november

Thank you for sharing your insights. I completely agree that understanding the nuances of different scripts is crucial when it comes to typeface design. It’s a balancing act, and sometimes you have to prioritize certain elements over others. Your approach of addressing each language’s needs individually makes a lot of sense—it's such a thoughtful way to ensure that the design truly serves its users.

By the way, I was diligent in creating a font that can support many languages.

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

@Frodo7 I was wondering if there are any words in any languages that have Ь (soft sign) and І (decimal i) (as two seperate letters making two different sounds) in that order…

Comment by Bryndan W. Meyerholt (BWM) Thu, 20th november

New punctuation has been updated

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

I edited the section (§), pilcrow (¶), dagger (†), and double dagger (‡) signs to go below the baseline (1 brick below).

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

Here's an updated snapshot of all characters in my font

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november
Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november
Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Thu, 20th november

@Bryndan W. Meyerholt (BWM): It is unlikely to find any example, a word in which the “ь” is followed by the “i”. The reason is simple: the soft sign “ь” marks palatalised consonants. The "i" itself indicates softness. Thus, there is no need to use the “ь”.

Comment by Frodo7 Thu, 20th november

It´s ok 👌 and very much letters but the most i dont need vor writing, i meen it´s evry fu###ng letter of the ABC (I wonder how long he worked on this, it's insane!)

Comment by Elch—maximal Tue, 25th november

Nice

Comment by Elch—maximal Tue, 25th november

@Elch—maximal: Thank you for your kind words!

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Tue, 25th november

I work on aurabesh its from star wars

Comment by Elch—maximal Wed, 26th november

why kind words

Comment by Elch—maximal Wed, 26th november

 @ PhuWorks (Phú Real)

Comment by Elch—maximal Wed, 26th november

(You already said "Nice."

Then I replied to you: "Thank you for your kind words!")

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Sat, 29th november

We'll soon add a font with a lowercase version. Stay tuned!

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Tue, 9th december

Here are three issues I found.

• The accented small letters in Latin, and the small letters in Greek and Cyrillic, are not lowercased. (image shown below)

• The Greek question mark does not look the same as the semicolon.

• The closing curly quote (”) should be set a little lower than the opening curly quote (“).

Comment by ctcg_ Thu, 11th december

I know, we'll edit for all lowercase characters (including with accents) soon

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Sun, 14th december

We're working on PW-Memory Grotesk font, a font that supports over a thousand glyphs.

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Mon, 15th december

And after we're finished working, we'll fix issues in this font

Comment by PhuWorks (Phú Real) Mon, 15th december

Wow Omg Cool 10/10.

Comment by KV67 Sun, 18th january

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