Fontstructing since | 6th April, 2008 |
Fontstructions | 199 shared, 149 staff picks |
Shared Glyphs | 16746 |
Downloads | 21355 downloads made of this designer’s work |
Comments Made | 2369 |
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.
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?"
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It's called ajicis because it is built upon the letters done for the wallpaper of Wipeout 3 game team AG Sys. It has the same grid structure but the letters look nothing like the original.
Also, this FS'tion was started on the phone (because I was too lazy to get off the bed and go to the computer). When I saw potential in the created letters, it was saved and opened on the iPad. The rest of the fs was done there. The only thing that couldn't be done on the iPad was adjusting of a composite brick. (It was fixed on the laptop days later.) So, 98% iPad.
@RobMeek: The iPad version worked well. However, Menu->Edit->Copy, Menu->Edit->Paste, etc. got tedious. Can we have the menu commands in icon form docked or floating somewhere on (in?) the tablet version? The icons can be half the size of the Tools icons to save space. Also, can the tools and zoom be docked as well on the tablet version? It would be helpful. Thanks.
This is a clone of tm ajicis originalHere's what not to do:
--Start an easy fontstruction to pretend you don't have time to do research assignment due last month
--Draw lowercase letters
--Change all letters to have slightly more personality
--Draw uppercase
--Change all lowercase to match the uppercase
--Draw numbers
--Change all uppercase to match numbers
--Change one letter so that it makes better auto-ligature
--Change all letters to have less personality
At this point, who knows how much time has been sunk into doing this "easy" fs and what it started out as. And unoriginal to boot. Forget it. Next!
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 cloneI was thinking of something else and the thought "go forth and multiply" came to mind.
The word forth brought to mind 4th, with the 4 fully formed as seen here. So it had to be done. In the process, I've made the personal best smoothest fake circle yet on fontstruct, backed by a pixel-by-pixel matching of a real approximated circle in Ai.
Out of 111 bricks used, only ten are from existing bricks; all the rest are custom bricks. There would have been a lot more bricks if most weren't rotated or flipped.
3 bricks tall.