The design process is typical in its atypicality (yes, it is a word, or, at least, should be!).
The atypicality necessitates the telling of the story behind it.
Looking for something to do...something easy to do, I came across the font shown 5th from the top in this article on Dieline. "I can do this," thought I. I did a 2 that looked similar. Based on that, did the 3. 5 6 9. 0 8. 1 7. "Hmm." Add the horizontal stripes. 7. 4? "No." Re-4? "No. Another 4? Perhaps thinner sides?" "Even thinner." "Hmm." Redo 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9. "Maybe this is better. OK, lets do the letters." Start with Z because it is almost a 2 with minor curve tweak. Do the S. B because 3 is done. A. V. C. E. F L. J. Etc.
The glyphs so far have a 3 horizontal band appearance. Do the lowercase. a is two bands. b is two bands...but how high should the ascender be? Also, the x-height seems wrong. Off somehow. "Can I do a 2 band uppercase with the letter slightly taller. Maybe 2 bricks taller?"
Redo A. Redo B. "No this B is not working." Redo B. Redo B. Redo B. "Hmm. Maybe." Redo C D. Redo E F L. "OK, this might work." Redo to all uppercase letters.
Do the lowercase. "Yes I like the new f." Redo other letters to include the flip. Most of the letters are the same width. "Maybe I can make this a mono-space font." Redo m. Redo M. W. V. "The A looks odd." Redo A. And so on.
The font may have started as a simple thing but it is very different now. "I'll just publish it." "No, I should at least do the basic punctuations." "No this hyphen is too thick." Redo. "Now it is too thin." Redo. "Now it is too wide. But this is mono-space font. The width cannot be altered." +. "That just looks weird." Redo +. Now the - looks off. Redo -. Now they both don't fit with the rest of the font. Redo + -. "No. I'll come back to them." Do [. "No that's too heavy top and bottom." Redo [. Do (. "This needs a different curve." Redo (. "Can I use this new curve somewhere else?" Redo @. "Hmm." Do ©. Do ®. Do ™. Do “. "I can't make this so wide." Do ‘. "Definately cannot make it mono-space." Redo all punctuation to be their natural width. "This is no longer a mono-space font. Should I redo M m W w to be more natural?" Redo do m. "No this is too much work. I can't be bothered anymore. Let the m's and w's be."
"The punctuation looks niiice. Should I do a font to match these?"
Create New FontStruction
Inspired by Bastard by Barnbrook Fonts and Minotur by cablecomputer
This font started offline. It wasn't even supposed to be a font. I was just showing some students the value of a grid, even as tiny as 5×5 and the thousands of possibilities it generates. It led to making an 'a'. Of course, once that exercise was over, I had to continue making other letters. It's a compulsion. Sorry. The offline idea was slightly different. Compromises had to be made due to the limitation in place by the bricks available.
Make the letters any width desired.
Type the uppercase letter for the left half of the letter, type an extender (or not), then type the same lowercase letter for the right half of the letter. The more extenders are inserted between the left and the right halves, the wider the letter becomes.
I and T are the exceptions where the extenders are typed before and after the left and right halves and not inbetween.
The other exceptions are M and W which have been split into 3 and extenders are added between the left, middle and right thirds.
? is split between ? and /
Extenders are located at @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) and _
How to extend:
A@@a, B##b, C$$c, D$$d, E##e, F%%f, G$$g, H^^h, &&Ii&&, J**j or J**$$j, K^^k, L**l, M(({((m, N((n, O$$o, P@@p, Q$$q, R%%r, S##s, (((Tt))), U**u, V**v, W**}**w, X^^x, Y^^y, Z__z, ?@@/
Reverse in the visual context can mean many things. I decided to create letters and mirrored them, attaching them to a spine.The letters looked like filigree jewellery pendants.
I know that the I , T and W don't follow the design rule; I tried to align them on a spine but the result was unsatisfactory.
This is a clone