Thin (Tag) | FontStruct

10 21731 Published: 5th July, 2022
Last edited: 6th July, 2022
Created: 21st June, 2020

STF_DER ZiiLTED - Neo-Grotesk italic hairline sans
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[ DESCRIPTION ]
The design is a simplistic slanted geometric hairline letterform with stylistic tapered spurs. Some extra glyph alternates were included to spice up this otherwise boring font, making it a little bit less boring.

The "DER ZIILTED" name was inspired by a poorly English speaking German person that is saying "The Tilted" in English but with a bad German emphasis on the phonetic sound of it hence 'der ziilted'
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[ INSIDE THIS FONT ]
■ Basic latin character set with only essential punctuation marks
■ Stylistic alternates
• Double storey lowercase 'a' & 'g'
• Spurless lowercase forms (still in trial stage and likely will change)
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[ TECHNICAL ]
     ■ Metrics(in square grid units)
         • design grid                  13 × 5
         • em-square:                   8 × 4
         • cap-height:                   8
         • x-height:                      6
         • ascent:                          2
         • descent:                        3
         • optical compensation:   ☒
         • stroke weight:               0.25

Nearly no kernig was done yet, but will be done at a later stage, since I'm 99.9% sure about having screwed up protocol for glyph 'side-bearings' in Italic fonts. (Still figuring out how exactly this should be handled properly, so stick with me on this matter..)
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[ PROCESS ]
Let's start with mentioning that only recently I was still tested 'Very Green' for Italic genetic material (found 0.01%).
I have very little experience doing Italic designs in general, having done only a hand full of trials, but completed oly a couple. This is actually only the third 'true' Italic font that I have ever made with Fontstruct, and the second one (I think) that got publish. Don't ask me why it took me about 5 years to finally do another, but, let me tell you this. Looking back at it after doing this font — "I now know why". This was tough to say the least.
I can imagine designing Italic fonts in general comes with it's own set of challenges of course. Doing this in Fontstruct only adds numerous challenges on top of that — "what else is new, right?!" Nothing that wasn't expected for the most part. But "holy frog on a leopard", what do I absolutely positively very much regret the choice to do so in such a small stroke weight. This stripped away every possible tollerance and free space for finetuning and making finalizing adjustments to minute little details required to perfecting everything (curvatures, transitions, slants and optical compensation).

I did the best I could to get visual aesthetics at least acceptable, and somewhat complete enough character set for basic latin text. There remain some small imperfections present for now that still need to get addressed.

For example I started experimenting with trying to achieve acceptable optical compensations such as overshoot. For now I only temporarily applied this to the experimental 'spurless' glyph alternate set for trial testing purpose, looking for acceptable results. And only once I found all the necessary solutions for each requisite glyph I transfer these adjustments one by one to the main character set. But all options remain open for the time being, it might so happen that in a later stage I decide not to implement them after all.

The 'spurless' glyph alternates will remain included to the project, but in what final form for now remains uncertain.

So from a typographer's point of view the font surely will look very basic and perhaps even simplistic. But looking at it from a Fontstructor's perspective, this was a lot more than just the average walk in the park for me.

But to be honest, I doubt I will do another Italic Fontstruction any time soon,haha

I hope you like it so far.

Cheers

Creative Commons

1 0721 Published: 18th June, 2022
Last edited: 18th June, 2022
Created: 18th June, 2022

woodsy serif!