I make computer fonts as a hobby, and I've been working on the current one, Cabbagetown, for over a year. It's a decorative display caps serifed font, intended for store signs, titling, and academic and athletic clothing. I still have a few character glyphs to complete in the symbols, number and punctuation. Here's a text sample of the completed glyphs, so far:
This is a new design, based on an alphabet originally copyrighted in 1874. The width of each glyph was reduced by 20% to begin with, and I made numerous design changes, from there.
This font is both very simple in its design, and very precise in its execution. Each glyph uses the minimum number of nodes* to hold the contours in place, (*nodes are points that connect two lines in a vector image).
I'm using a new procedure to do precision editing. The procedure involves using large scaled bitmap images as a guide to editing the vector image. At maximum enlargement of the vector, a glyph is about 14 feet tall, and I can make adjustments to node and vector control handles** in increments of about one millimeter, at that size,(** vector control handles determine the amount of curvature to a line that isn't straight horizontally nor vertically).
Here are some of the completed glyphs:
It took me much of January to complete this number sign.
The @ symbol is a little weird, but it would be hard for me to make it different, without greatly increasing the width. I'll be able to make the circular section in the middle of the 'a' a little bit rounder.
This asterisk was the first glyph that I designed, 'from scratch'.
It's quite a challenge to create the curve on top at large sizes; almost any other font would have a flat spot on top.
The outside line of the 'shadow'*** on the X is off by one editing unit; the node near the top of the straight section of that line needed to be moved one unit, to the right. That's why it narrows slightly, just above half distance, (since fixed). (*** the smaller contours aren't meant to be shadows. They're supposed to be the visible edges of raised, three dimensional letters, as seen from a point of view below the letter in two dimensions, and above and right of center in three dimension, but in a stylized, rather than a realistic depiction).
A lot of my design involves the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal alignment of nodes and control handles. The screen capture below shows the vertical and horizontal alignments in purple - nodes are light blue, red, or green, depending on how they behave, when moved. Control handles are yellow. Also shown is an unusual diagonal alignment of six nodes. This alignment is exact in the vector, but appears slightly off in this small scale screen capture, if you enlarge it. The line slope is 3/-2, so the horizontal distance between each point in the alignment must be some multiple of three editing units, and the vertical distances are 2/3 of the horizontal distances, moved to the left.
I do my precision editing at about 40 times larger than this vector screen cap. This degree of precision does make a difference, particularly at the smaller point sizes.
~bito
This is a new design, based on an alphabet originally copyrighted in 1874. The width of each glyph was reduced by 20% to begin with, and I made numerous design changes, from there.
This font is both very simple in its design, and very precise in its execution. Each glyph uses the minimum number of nodes* to hold the contours in place, (*nodes are points that connect two lines in a vector image).
I'm using a new procedure to do precision editing. The procedure involves using large scaled bitmap images as a guide to editing the vector image. At maximum enlargement of the vector, a glyph is about 14 feet tall, and I can make adjustments to node and vector control handles** in increments of about one millimeter, at that size,(** vector control handles determine the amount of curvature to a line that isn't straight horizontally nor vertically).
Here are some of the completed glyphs:
It took me much of January to complete this number sign.
The @ symbol is a little weird, but it would be hard for me to make it different, without greatly increasing the width. I'll be able to make the circular section in the middle of the 'a' a little bit rounder.
This asterisk was the first glyph that I designed, 'from scratch'.
It's quite a challenge to create the curve on top at large sizes; almost any other font would have a flat spot on top.
The outside line of the 'shadow'*** on the X is off by one editing unit; the node near the top of the straight section of that line needed to be moved one unit, to the right. That's why it narrows slightly, just above half distance, (since fixed). (*** the smaller contours aren't meant to be shadows. They're supposed to be the visible edges of raised, three dimensional letters, as seen from a point of view below the letter in two dimensions, and above and right of center in three dimension, but in a stylized, rather than a realistic depiction).
A lot of my design involves the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal alignment of nodes and control handles. The screen capture below shows the vertical and horizontal alignments in purple - nodes are light blue, red, or green, depending on how they behave, when moved. Control handles are yellow. Also shown is an unusual diagonal alignment of six nodes. This alignment is exact in the vector, but appears slightly off in this small scale screen capture, if you enlarge it. The line slope is 3/-2, so the horizontal distance between each point in the alignment must be some multiple of three editing units, and the vertical distances are 2/3 of the horizontal distances, moved to the left.
I do my precision editing at about 40 times larger than this vector screen cap. This degree of precision does make a difference, particularly at the smaller point sizes.
~bito
