Fontstructing since | 6th April, 2008 |
Fontstructions | 199 shared, 149 staff picks |
Shared Glyphs | 16746 |
Downloads | 21353 downloads made of this designer’s work |
Comments Made | 2369 |
For reason lost in the mist of time, I wanted to do Cyrillic letters. Cyrillic text looks really cool written down, no? Maybe that was the reason. Who knows.
However, not knowing Russian at all, the nuances of the written script are unknown to me. Hopefully, I got at least some of the letters right.
This font was initially done as a combination of CMYK colors. Although a lot of time was spent in creating that font, the vibrancy of the letters in a mixture of those colors was a garish nightmare which was difficult to look at. Hence, it is gone.
Still there's a font here somewhere. Hence this toned-down, Not (¬) CMYK version—all of the geometry, less of the disturbia.
PS: AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz0123456789!?@&*(){}[]|/\.,;:'"‘’“”«»<>-+=%|
Every possible permutation of the above glyphs generates 9,025 kerning pairs to be tested. I've only tested 2,994 kerning pairs. Then I lost steam. Whether I got them right or not is a whole another can of worms.
This is a cloneThe 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
from the category of 'also ran'
Only interesting in theory; the practical application leaves a lot to be desired. Incomplete as well. Only sharing now because vacations are over. Back to work from tomorrow moring. Won't really have time to work on this in any meaningful way anymore. Unless inspiration strikes out of somewhere and I am able to stay awake past my bedtime.
Every glyph has a counter rotated glyph or has self rotational symmetry—all except the c, which remains a loner loser.
paired rotational glyphs: ae bq dp ft hy jr mw nu G9 JR NV 25
self rotational symmetric glyphs: g i k l o s x z Q S Z ! & , '
Full disclosure: This fs was started before there was such a thing as Reverse competition.
Side story on the making: This fontstruction is deceptively simple. It was quite a challenge to execute. Just because the strokes seem flowing doesn't mean they are all placed in the logical grid block. The rounded-off ends forced the bricks to be placed in any of the 8 adjoining blocks and nudged into place. Consequently, due to the nature of nudge only moving as much as half a block in any direction, some compromises had to be made in the shapes.
~Type an uppercase letter and type the corresponding (or some other) lowercase letter to fill in the shape.
You can use the uppercase letters to form one word and type the lowercase fill letters to form the same or another word, or fill with a blanking glyph to complete the letter with no center letter. So, two types of letters are possible with this one font.
The letters had to be designed such that the uppercase could read as a letter without a center fill on it's own, or filled with blank glyph, or with a center letter. In doing so, the font turned auto-stencil and auto-monospaced. Also, since the unfilled uppercase read as the correct letter with the hole in it, this fs can be said to have three fonts in it.
The gaps are 1/8 brick; the thickness of the inner letter strokes is 2/8 brick. Therefore, this limitation meant that the glyphs with a stroke in the horizontal center can either be lined up with the left side blocks or the right side one. Therefore, 3/8 brick thickness I and T are provided on { and }.
Letter couples are as follows: Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii or I{ Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt or T} Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Number couples are: !1 @2 #3 $4 %5 ^6 &7 *8 (9 )0
Blanks: ~, space
Center blank: `
Pipe: = (which will offset the monospacing)
Others; ? is at ?/ ! is at |\
Punctuations are where they are supposed to be: . , ; : ' " ’ ” ‘ “ -
Sample: Type the following in User Input to see the font as it is supposed to be: A`AaB`BbC`CcD`DdE`EeF`FfG`GgH`HhI`IiI{J`JjK`KkL`LlM`MmN`NnO`OoP`PpQ`QqR`RrS`SsT`TtT}U`UuV`VvW`WwX`XxY`YyZ`Zz!`!1@`@2#`#3$`$4%`%5^`^6&`&7*`*8(`(9)`)0?`?/|`|\)-)+~_<>=
6 bricks tall.
The sample is a font pun: TWO in ONE.
PS: Not sure how future it is.
Started this font on a whim on the phone while having my morning coffee. The first version of the uppercase letters was done in the time it took to finish drinking it. Worked on it off and on during the day. Was done by evening. The sample probably took longer than the making of the font.
Thanks, fontstruct.
Apparently, it is quite easy to forget what gets a fontstruction going. Something about ultra condensed bla bla bla. The rest is just a matter of having a creative activity to occupy the mind. And if in the process you can help out a friend, all the better.
I saw the logo for tramplin.tv [pictured below] a loooong time ago and was fascinated by it. It used to live on my computer desktop so I can look at it frequently. Even thought to redo it in fontstruct but...just looking at it, it was clear it wasn't doable...at least back then. At some point, the image was moved off to some other to-be-filed folder, and eventually I forgot about it.
I found it again the other day while hunting for some other file.
It was still fascinating. And in the meantime, fontstruct had grown up considerably (Thanks, Rob!). It was time to attempt doing it.
Well, kicked my ass, didn't it.
It seems so simple: One diagonal that goes from one letter to another in smooth transition, bisected by a different angle diagonals. No. Easy in concept, killer in making the geometry work of 2×1 diagonals to 1×4 diagonals.
No matter what thickness of diagonals were selected and whatever the gaps were left, the angles would not line up at some point or another. Which was confusing as 2 goes into 4 exactly 2 times, so things should have lined up without complication. I remembered, many years ago kix used Transparent Windows utility to make the browser transparent so he could trace silhouetted figures for one of his brilliant fs. Even tried tracing. Nope. After many failed attempts, had to break out Illustrator to better visualize the grid and diagonal guides of my own.
[See picture below]
Figuring out the geometry was much simpler in Ai. Found out where I was going wrong. First attempt at doing a and m and making them line up worked like a charm. From then on, it was just a matter of doing the glyphs. Some of them were simple to execute; others like e and c and especially z were quite difficult...at least for my limited intelligence.
Anyway, here it is.
Disclaimer: The original logo is probably copyrighted to someone. I don't own the rights to it. It is displayed here for comparision purposes and for full disclosure. If the owners of the original logo have a objection for its display here, it will be removed immediately.
This is [was] a minimum [http://fontstruct.com/fontstructors/minimum/public] font, created December, last year. Unfortunately, minimum account has developed some problems that prevents normal usage such as editing descriptions, downloading fonts, commenting, etc. Nevermind. He was useless anyway. :-)
Also, I can't seem to figure out how to create links either. This must be my dumb year.
Further exploration of salvaging tm otw. Requires a lot of kerning...that will probably never happen. Holding of breath is ill advised.
This is a clone of tm otw iiThis font is a result of the thinking "The punctuation looks niiice. Should I do a font to match these?" on tm wto font.
The letters were allowed to be as wide as they wanted. A lot (when it became apparent that many versions will be necessary to get the right shape) of the earlier attempts at forming the letters are left in the font.
This font and tm Byte started off as one. Both were different from what they have now become. The idea was to create a very heavy, minimal curves and angles to give a sense of the glyph.
It started with a plain N and a solid O. Making the E match either the N or the O resulted in deviation from the style just enough that it warranted a spin-off into a font of it's own.
Some letters—such as G and H—proved quite difficult to match in the style of either. A slight angle shift resulted in a glyph that did not go with other glyphs. I kept trying different possibilities...and at some point decided to save the discarded option into another fs, which now contains more than 200 characters.
The teardrop counter in tm Byte forced a complete redraw of all glyphs at about 2× the size.
I am already working on two additional fonts that came out of this exercise...and it might yield more.
Perhaps it is lack of motivation, or running out of ideas, or over abundance of streaming services, or the creeping up of age, or just plain laziness, but making new fonts gets harder and harder each day. And finish.
Constructed on the bones of fs minimal.
This should have been a minimum font, but minimum can't do color.
The idea was to simulate transparency. After trying out multiple color hatch patterns, it was apparent that it is not going to work. The earlier attempts are left in the font for you to judge yourself their efficacy.
The file is pretty heavy because of having so many anchor points (times 8 layers). Scrolling will be slow. Because the next letter overlapping the previous hides part of the black outline, just outline glyphs are there to stack two layers (colored below, outline above) to get the correct effect.
Is there some trick to make the downloaded font to work in color? The version I downloaded comes as *-svg.ttf. Aren't the color svg fonts in .otf format? Thus, no sample.