Ten years ago, a StumbleUpon Fontstruct on April 8, 2008 has been one of the highlights of my life. Few things have provided so much joy and fewer things have kept my interest for so long. Type design has always been a fascination for me and the simplicity of the UI/UX of fontstruct has allowed me to explore all that I can imagine without getting in the way while letting me do as I please for the most part. In times of creativity, fontstruct was there to let it flow, and in times of personal lows, fontstruct was there to allow me to ignore that which was beyond my control. Furthermore, the overall civility and helpful nature of the fontstruct community is still one of the best on the internet. I have been using the fontstruct website almost daily for 10 years now and rarely do I not see something new that is amazing and awe inspiring. The creativity of the designers past and present is incredible.
I wish to thank FontShop for sponsoring fontstruct for so long allowing it to grow. Most importantly, I wish to thank Mr. Meek for creating and constantly enhancing this incredible gift of creativity and a calming haven for over-active minds.
Thank you.
Thank you for this incredible gift that is fontstruct, Rob. Always a joy.
Congratulation on achieving the first ten years today (April 1, 2018).
Best wishes, as ever.
This is a clone of tm FestDeceptively simple.
This fontstruction was made possible by several fontstruct special capabilities: connecting brick, brick stacks, custom bricks, and nudge. Out of 68 bricks used, only the full square brick is from the available bricks; the remaining 67 bricks are all modified in some way or another.
3 bricks tall.
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.
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.
I've been wanting to do this kind of font for ages, think of it as a soft square or a hard circle. Since it's been so long, I can't really remember the exact source of inspiration, but I do remember it had something to do with kix and his work.
The ability to kern now has obviously made the spacing better than it would have been otherwise. Thanks, Rob.
While waiting at a doctor's office, absentmindedly drawing letters on my knee with a new pen in my hand, I realized after I while that I was doodling the glyphs of fs_penmanship, although with curved ends. Which got me thinking that it just might be possible with the new and improved HTML fontstructor.
This is the second version of that idea. The first version had too many compromises in lining up the stacked and nudged bricks. Be that as it may, the new fontstuctor has grown up so much and although quite recognizable compared to the original, but level 1000 in possibilities, all hidden behind a simple interface. Brilliant.
PS, Rob: I found two things that need further updating: 1. Because of the way 4×4 stacks work, nudges need to be in increments of 8th as opposed to the 4th that is currently the case, otherwise, some of the bricks just don't line up. 2. Bricks should be rotatable from the center of the grid box in increments of 15° (or at least 45°).
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.
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.
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.
I 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.
Here'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!