This 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.
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
Small-grid doodle which creates new combinatorial forms.
I considered this design rather rough and unappealing until I gave it negative spacing. This caused the forms to merge together in unpredictable and interesting ways. The lesson here is that sometimes the metrics, not the aesthetics, are what "make" or "save" a design.
It's called Choices because this basic idea lead to numerous minor iterations that completely changed the character of the...er...characters. All the unused possibilites are now sitting dormant in another font. Perhaps they will become a full font (or three)...someday.
This is a cloneApparently, 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 decided to make a design which incorporated the thinnest/lightest weight lines possible in FontStruct. This is the result; I'll add more if people like it.
These 1/32 lines cannot be accurately nudged, so a unique line has to be built for each vertical position where I want a line. These lines also cannot be centered on a place where two curves meet (such as the middle of B or R). This introduces some unintentional asymmetry to the design, but I like it, so I'll keep it.
There is also the problem that forming a diagonal line of the same line weight is nearly impossible. While angled 1/32 lines can be formed, their angles are all close to 0. No method exists for making a line which slants at 45 degrees while also being 1/32 weight. So, I had to make some thicker lines in certain areas. I don't think they detract from the design, but if you scrutinize this enough, you'll notice them.