VAN NELLE (Blueprint) — Geometric modernist sans
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☛ THE SOURCE
A re-interpretation of the 1926 geometric sans serif alphabet system reproduction by Jacob Jongert, published in a 1930 sourcebook by N.J. van de Vecht. The geometric uppercase set of the alphabet system is what would later become the famous sans serif capitals which he used for lettering throughout many of his Van Nelle materials.
☛ THE FONTSTRUCTION
Attempt at making a convincing recap of the original alphabet by Jacob Jongert as it was shown in the 1930s sourcebook, and extrapolate that into a full functional font. The decision to go with a small grid sparked a number of limitations in terms of the design freedom that forced some inevitable changes. But the general idea sort of became not to make it a revival, but rather more or less a faithful revision. One that would still be instantly recognizable yet didn't necessarily had to be all about accuracy.
☛ —The small grid design made sure this wasn't happening anyway!
But, for instance, the most striking difference between the two fonts (their weight) in fact is such a byproduct for one of those limitations. Something FS's small grid couldn't properly reproduce, so VAN NELLE (Blueprint) has a slight stronger weight, making the font somewhat of a bold style version of the original. This in addition provided me with slight extra freedom to inplement a little personal touch for further manicure of the font's finer details. Which allowed me to cope with some of the optical clunkiness that come with a fatter face and the grid based design.
Besides these circumstantial differences, which were basically beyond my control, I've also made some intentional changes to make the typeface more practical to use. The changes include things like the significantly lowered ascender height, the slight different width for certain letters, larger tittle (dot above i, j & ij), and several more. despite these changes I believe it very much still reflects what Jongerts once invisioned for the system.
☛ SOME NOTES ON THE ORIGINAL AND ITS CREATOR
Jacob Jongert(1883-1942) was a advertising designer from the Netherlands. After varied studies, including being Roland Holst’s assistant and an acquaintance and colleague of S. H. de Roos [who brought the Arts & Crafts ideas of William Morris to the Netherlands and devoted his career to book design and typography] with whom Jongert experimented with several printing techniques and discovered graphic design as his ideal art form.
¶ In 1923 Jongert rolled in a unique and long-term collaboration with the Van Nelle company, where he became head designer, a position he held until 1940. The Van Nelle company had an extremely modern approach towards advertising (they even commissioned Cassandre to do a poster) and Jongert created for the firm a recognizable image with clear shapes, powerful letters and primary colours, totally Dutch avant-garde in style, and with a strict and rigorous approach directly linked to De Stijl principles. The corporate identity he created has become a milestone in the design world.
¶ The lettering, however, is the driving force that ties it all together. The style is a straightforward set of plain, mono-linear, sans serif capitals in a style that just started to come into fashion in the late 1920s, early 1930s with the rise of functionalism and geometric type design. Yet, while these ideas were already thrown out there, its clever simplicity plus the systematic and cohesive way Jongert implemented his lettering was unusual at the time. The square and minimal construction of the forms allowed the letters to contract and expand to fit any situation, yet maintain a consistent and recognizable appearance throughout the Van Nelle line. ¶ Something we only recently have learned to appreciate is to see his hand crafted system amid the current advancements in variable-font technology, which offers a similar kind of flexibility to typeface designs. A quality that certainly placed him well ahead of its time.
What I particulary like about Jongert's original is the stuff that is going on in the lowercase set of the alphabet, which are those quirky lowercase letter inventions that are different from the more traditional modernist sans, but sadly the lowercase letters were pretty much never used in his works.
I created a simple PDF typeface specimen for those who want to see the high-resolution preview.
PDF SPECIMEN WAS DELETED
Thats all Folks ☚
☛ Cheers
VEROORDEELD - A geometric slab serif
This is a small type family with two style variations, see links bellow!
• Display Bold contrasted display version ◄- U are here!
• Text Light weight monostroke version
Accidental Fontstruct remake of Senator by Emigre. Initially reconstructing the lettering seen on this book cover, later found out about it being an existing comericial font. I decided to completed it anyway. But for this reason it will not be available for downloading. Sorry...
VOLLE BUISJES — Geometric sans-serif style
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[ INTRODUCTION ]
This font had derived and materialized from my previous FontStruction called Buisjes, and had innitially been planned to be made into this “solid”-style instance that would've then were to be combined and included to the original master font. That idea was later canceled when I decided not to make this part of the “Buisjes”-typeface.
I still went on completed it though, but I was now simply treating it as this unrelated new font instead.
The original “outlined”-variant still stood testimony in this second stage of development, as it served as the global basic backbone for this. But, since it now no longer was bound by accurate representation I could start utilize more dynamic sculpting techniques and make minute adjustments that incnclude some optical corrections, as well as implementing a slight more polished looking geometry.
[ TECHNICAL BACKGROUND ]
I took a clone from “Buisjes” and started modifing it into this new solid style. What I basically did was utilizing the “brick swap”-method in the FS-editor to replace every brick inside the font's “My Bricks”-palette. By doing so, essentially converting the font one-brick-at-a-time into this 1 : 1 conversion of its source without making any additional changes to the actual glyph-contours.
After a while due to some undesirable result that came from replacing the original bricks the design took a different turn when I started realizing that making an exact 1 : 1 conversion into this solid style wouldn't generate the most desirable looking font. This new solid version that was rendered from the “brick swap”-process seemed to have several optical complications, that when compared to the original outline version, had quite the different effect on its physical properties as well as the aesthetic quality of the letterforms, and had far less visual appeal. These newly presented optical misfortune also had a direct negative effect on the font's legibility. In oder to gain a better understanding as to why it took a toll on legibility some additional thing needs to be explained first, to make sense of it all later. This explains in short the visual effect of added contrast that comes from that “bi-linear”-characteristic nature of the outline version, which employs so much more emphasis to the font's overall geometric properties of various form, and therefor to the contour shape of a glyph. In return this has a direct impact on the overall effectiveness of these forms.
The reduction of this additional contrast within the font's “positive vs. negative”-whitespace balance for the solid version results in a letterform that has a rather weak representation of its several typographic components as well as for each of the individual letter-parts that form a whole, which also help to distinguish one letter from another. In simple words this means that a solid style lacks a lot of that emphasis that is present in the the original outline version, and makes for a far less pleasant and effective font.
Another issue I had with the 1 : 1 identical conversion was the unanticipated but pretty drastic deterioration of its initial “wow”-factor in the solid version that was generated. No longer beneficiary from additional added value that came with a more “decorative”-characteristic that is present within a outlined glyph contour. Also the “bi-linear”-nature of the outlined letters sort of gave the impression it was putting double the emphasis to the typographic parts and the geometric properties that make up each letterform. The rather squarish “box”-like characteristics of the lettering became much more evident in the solid glyph face. Shifting visual focus from the previously more ornate display attraction away towards this more “mechanical”-style that is this rather plain and somewhat shallow looking flat faced letter.
All of these were things that worked out just fine in the font's outlined version, but not so much in terms of a solid “filled”-like style.
Here are some of the things that cause trouble within an exact 1 : 1 conversion into solid bricks:
• Enclosed typographic elements render much thicker than what is considered “acceptable”
(requires optical correction)
• Diacritics render too thick and often too big
(requires a complete re-design)
• Radius of FontStruct's default solid circle arc connection brick is too small
‣ Making a solid font constructed from these to look compressed
‣ Arc intersection point not sitting deep enough
• Reduced emphasis in depth of geometric form
‣ Simple rather “feature-less” and “squarish”-looking geometry
(both requires numerous custom composite bricks in order to break-away from these constraints)
— The combination of the above in terms of the appropriate adjustments required to make optical corrections in order for it to have balanced proportions will have such significant impact to certain aspects of the physical presentation of the letterforms that they no longer share that seamless overlapping cohesion, and it couldn't really classify any longer as being this solid / filled style instance to the original master font.
That wasn't all (LOL) but yeah I'm done typing for now!
Hope you like it, more info follows..
Cheers
This is a clone of STF_BUISJESVON NEUHAUS — Geometric “Bauhaus”-inspired style
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This is the latest evolution of a “Bauhaus”-inspired constructivist style typeface design that originally started 5 years, or two font versions back.
To me personally this is a long awaited triumph, that has finally materialized after years worth of been haunted by this idea, and the crazy speculations about this ghost that would never be...
Well, that was untill now... So at last, I can now finally proudly present to you this latest of arrivals to come from this unforeseen series of typeface progressions.
This newborn addition is in fact the 3rd phase of this letter concept's evolution, and caused the font project to undergo a series of addaptations that graduatelly increasing the levels of sophistication possible by chaging it's internal structure and behaviour within the FontStruct-editor. This 3rd addaptation unlocks the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” full power potential.
Enabling all editor functionallity to provide the most versatile font creation capabilities available within FontStruct.
STF_BLAUHAUS was the font's very first version, created back in early 2019. It's the font's original concept as it innitially was first intended. It essentially started out as a personal study into the design of letters on a small grid. And more importantly, the creation of required composite bricks to do so.
The idea back then was to craft the most complex geometry possible without the use of any “Expert Mode” functionality whatsoever. Now, what this innitially did was still quite novel to me at that time, as this had led to the development of a FontStruction that was solely built from the extensive use of composite bricks. Not just a couple, but a staggering 272 composite bricks in total. Many of which in fact are quite intuitive and required certain amounts of careful thinkering with the maths found in it's geomtry to craft these custom brick compositions.
So as explained above, there was no use of any of FontStruct's “Expert Mode” functions. This meant that the option to nudge, flip or rotate any of the bricks wasn't available. Now this changes everything in respect to building complex fonts, since in order to get all the bits and pieces of a letter such as: crossbars, intersections, curves and corners properly aligned requires, a precisly fitting composite brick to be tailor-made. In terms of the FontStruct limitations, this cause the physical properties of FontStruct's brick composition tool to be fundamental as to how much complexity and refinement can be put into it's letter geometry. In other words this is fundamental as to how well crafted the design is going to look in the end, since there is no option to further manicure shape or form other than from within those bounds of the adjacent 16-brick-array grid squares of a selection for composition.
I've choosen to design the alphabet concept in this “Bauhaus”-inspired geometric style, simply because of the simplicity this style has in terms of its basic pure geometric forms. The final result became this simple and bold looking small grif display type with a “3-bricks” Em-size only.
but it had some crucial compromises that had to be made due to FontStruct's design limitations. Not terrible, but not quite perfect either.
One very important byproduct from this limitations as were described above was a huge collection of very intuitive custom brick compositions that offer seemless alignement and perfect fits, basically an extensive set of custom bricks that work in a very similar fashion as FontStruct's default “Connect” bricks.
Bringing us to the main reason for 2022's version of this font.
STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus) was the font's second version, and most recent state that it sat in for the last year, up till this now. In this 2022 version of the of this font design modification the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” functionality was introduced into the design. Hoping to further manicure some of these compromised critical area's in an attempt to see what refinements could be implemented to revise the 2019's original version.
Now that the option to nudge, flip or rotate bricks was available, new more complex geometric shapes suddenly became possible. This sparked an explosion of new characters and additional alternative forms. Although now the FontStruct editor got vastly more versatile and potent, it remained strongly limited by that still present 1:1 brick size filter setting. Nevertheless, this made possible a very substantial update of the older font, and allowed many new shaping capabilities.
STF_VON NEUHAUS is the 3rd and final evolition to have come from my earlier FontStruct endeavours; STF_BLAUHAUS and STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus)
This version basically saw the transition from a font only using 1:1 brick size filter into a font at 2:2 brick size filter settings to unlock all power potential of the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” functions.
I could now write another eqyually as long body of text, explaining what's new in this final version or which other improvements were made, or say about it whatever the hell I want, but I figure that the picture becomes even more apparent when simply comparing the 3 fonts from old to new, and see the evolution happening before your eyes.
Start with STF_BLAUHAUS, folowed by STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus), and witness the full glory of "next-level" FontStructing that made possible the last version STF_VON NEUHAUS.
I hope you like it,
Cheers
This is a clone of STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus)ZEPHTON (Pro) — 70's future retro / sci-fi style typeface
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[ INTRODUCTION ]
A revival of the Sci-Fi lettering used by the “Atlantic Toy Company” for their “Galaxy Serie”. A science fiction themed toy line that was manifactured from 1978 to the early 1980s.
The lettering seen on their packeging uses a modified and filled version of a typeface called Paperclip Contour, which was designed by Dutch graphic designer Ad Werner, and was issued by Mecanorma in 1973. There is very little information provided on the web in regard to the original typeface by Werner. And even fewer images. Nothing that show a complete character set, only FontInUse submissions. But taken from the research I conducted I can safely conclude that the original Paperclip Contour typeface has just one style, which is outlined, and that it includes a lower case(a-z) letterset with numerals and just a had full of symbols and punctuation.
That being said, this actually is the second revision I did for the lettering. The innitial first version had a super basic character set, as well as a couple of mistakes included alongside some compromises in respect to certain glyphs. This was due to the limited knowledge I had in regard to the use of the FS-editor at that time. So the font wasn't 100% accurate. This newer version correct most of the inconsistencies that were present in the older version.
Due to the incomplete resource material on the original Paperclip Contour by Werner I can't check accuracy of this newer version. But I think that apart from the thicker weight in Zephton its 99% accurate.
Where the older version ran short by a lot, this new revision in fact can qualify as a full font, with everything from numerals, symbols, puntuation marks as well as accented letters for more Latin languages. And ever some glyph alternatives. Making this much more of a functional font.
[ THE FONTSTRUCTION ]
The font is a “Unicase” style typeface that has only “Minuscules” included. There are glyph alternate forms for several letters as well as a secondary set of numeral figures. These characters are located in the Unicode blocks for “Halfwidth And Fullwidth Forms” and “Private Use Area 1”
There is also a full (a-z, 0-9) alphanumeric set with “Contour Outlined” glyph alternative forms, which is located in the “Private Use Area 2”
The font saw a major update that tied everything together, and sort of finalizes the font for proper use.
Several characters have received minor adjustments in order to find a balanced harmonic distribution of typeset material. Also several improvements have been made to the overall shape and form of various characters. In addition to that numerous new characters been designed, expanding the character set even further.
Work also continued in the metric department, building the kerning table, that contains 2368 stored kerning pairs so far. Spacing was reduced by 50% to tighten the letter fit significantly. To round things up and convert it into a more functional typeface some of the characters were rearranged and/or relocated to different Unicode blocks.
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[ CONTOUR OUTLINED GLYPH ALTERNATIVE FORMS ]
The contour outline glyph alternative forms are not 100% accurate conversions of their solid counterparts. This due to minor design difficulties that simply made it impossible to fully execute it at its current size and with this thin stroke weight. The deformities are simply the result of a lack in fully smoothened stroke contours in some of the transitions from diagonal to curved parts. These flaws are minute, and mostly only noticable at large size rendering, but nonetheless present. In small to medium size text these imperfections are hardly visible, and pose no real problem. Anyway.. the contour outlined glyphs are still very close approximations nonetheless, just so that it happens to be with a small number of tiny imperfections.
As a direct result of this the two sets with glyphs do not fully match and therefor not seemlessly overlap.
This can be ignored for most part in the majority of the font's application, but it does create two important limitations:
1) Contour outlined glyphs are unsuitable for vector path outline rendering when the stroke alignment is set to "Outside" (Configured like that with threshold for the corner point angle set to sharp these imperfections in the glyph contours can generate spikey disruptions to appear in the stroke rendering).
— So this configuration should be avoided.
2) The two styles are unsuitable (or incompatible) with stacked “multi-layer" overlay text compositions.
— Simply due to the fact the two variations aren't a 100% true match.
They do on the other hand, combine perfectly side-by-side in text composition.
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[ MORE LIKE THIS ]
There is also this other FontStruction that was inspired by Ad Werner's font Paperclip Contour, called Neue Werner Paperclip, this one was crafted by fellow memberfunk_king
Thats it for now...
Cheers
This is a cloneSee more:
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1975390/molekyule
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/261862/molecular_3
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1456652/mocholataaa55-2-2
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/2394447/quazonite
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/843012/fs_himali
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1382767/from-a-to-b
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/376033/scrawl_8
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/376397/pushpins
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1822737/fs-nodice
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/359675/fs_ink_blot
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/109135/sirquette_8bit_closed
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/354056/mertinal
The font was inspired by runic lettering and was taken from the theme unstable. sticks were used as the main shapes to create the typeface, to give this typeface a weak breakable feeling. I wanted to show a balancing act in the type to display the theme and give it a sense of unease.
(IT LOOKS MUCH BETTER WHEN YOU USE THE ZOOM BAR)
Feel free to get in touch
Instagram: Mabry_Graphical
This is a cloneThis was a simple idea started from S and T. Most of the glyphs have two verticle strokes that are 4-bricke-wide and a 1-brick-wide area in the middle of the character. except I, L, S and T (actually a lot more). They are a bit different. Especially S, T and L. The whole characters are only 8 bricks wide. As I mentioned above, It's because the whole font started from these characters.
Straka the name came from last name of a person. The S and T reminds me of this person's last name. I like this last name although I don't even know him.
About the Latin extension, I have made only the glyphs that require no new design, just diacritics and already made letters. So I can pretend like hard-working on fonts but copy paste in reality. :P
Also, I made Arabic glyphs. Only isolated forms. Which I suppose won't be a comfortable experience to Arabic users. It's like every letter has crazy swashes but every letters are lightyears away from each other.(or is it?)
Credit me bcuz it took days and I gave it all to you for free. Unthankful hairless ape. :p
has it gone 2 far? hope it didn't hurt you.
A twenties era font with the uppercase measuring twenty glyphs tall, the lowercase measuring five glyphs tall by four glyphs wide, to multiply out to twenty, and incorporating exactly twenty different glyphs to boot.
It was really quite fun seeing all of the ways to sneak the number twenty into this font for the competition. Please enjoy!