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Object lesson: Why It Pays To ALWAYS Start With "s"
19 Comments
s for sigh.
s for solutionless.
s for slitmywrists.
For some reason I'm reminded that "the "sh" sound can be spelled 13 different ways: ocean, machine, special, pshaw, sure, schist, conscience, nauseous, she, tension, issue, mission, nation." If the 'sh' sound is so abundently used, how come it doesn't have a letter of its own? On the other hand, we have 'c', a letter the two possible pronunciations of which are well covered by 's' and 'k'. Then there is 'q' with only one possible sound, already covered by 'k'. 'x' represent two possible sounds, 'cks' and 'z'. The 'cks' sound is just not used enough to justify giving it a separate letter while the 'z' sound is already covered. So I've just freed-up three letters. Couldn't one of them be used for the 'sh' sound?
I have no idea why I brought that up. It helps not at all your 's' issue (or icue, ique, ixue).
some ideas:
for my eyes the bottom leg of e and g – and s! – could be straight or similar to the hook of the j.
(but maybe it won't be 'intaglio')
the solution comes not from consistency or straight concept ...
it comes from surprise and invention
there are some nice s-solutions in the work of neville brody ...
i'm imagining an s made of a vertical line with the hooks of the j at the top and the bottom.
s for success
s for surprise
s for solid solution
s for solidus curve ;)
this is 10! no matter how many glyphs to come.
i love it.
PS.: i got an idea for that "s"...
i'll be back :)
i guess you like the left one, 'cause you use to keep your fonts kind of rebelliously...
my fave is the right one. maybe it's more legible in small sizes...
i you feel like these suit your font, choose wisely, hehe
it's stolen from the "j" :)
btw...
(and just because this font appears to be "in focus"):
It's seems i missed how/why WILLIAUM suddenly disappeared(?!?).
I didn't find any hint or anything, so... it would be nice, if anyone could explain that to me?
A large loss for all this...
I cloned this font because i wanted to know how you made it ...
phew! these double-sized bricks are very tricky ...
and you've mixed some normal bricks together in one square of the matrix! – how did you do that?
would you teach me?
Williaum, one of the early Fontstucter and author of some amazing fonts, shared the technique commenting on some of his fonts. But for some (unknown) reasons now his fonts are not shared anymore, and so is the technique description.
I never used the technique (I found it too tricky to use) but maybe Intaglio can explain you the details.
What you are asking for is a technique called Brick Stacking--discovered, coined, and perfected by the master fontstructor williaum. He could explain it better than I. Still, I'll try.
Put any two bricks in adjacent cells--horizontal, vertical, or even diagonal. Let's take a horizontal example and call the brick in the left cell A and the one in the right cell brick B. Select A and B. Move AB combination over one cell to the right (so that A brick is now in the cell B brick was). Deselect (this is important). Select just the B brick and move it to the left one cell. B will replace A. Undo twice. Bricks stacked. You will find that the two bricks now exist in a single cell, creating a custom brick shape.
Brick stacking only works that one time. You can move the stack anywhere you want on the character you created it but you cannot copy and paste the stack anywhere else. Any time you need a brick stack, you will have to create it manually. Hope this helps.
many thanks, thalamic!
@guentersen: I know you asked about brick stacking before, so I wanted to apologize for letting my response slip. Thank you thalamic for picking up on that. I was planning on making a tutorial like williaum did, but haven't made time. I'm with thalamic in stating that I couldn't explain it as well as willaum.
When his fonts went offline, I sought out williaum. He mentioned that he had urgent matters to tend to, so I respected his decision and praised him for his creative and supportive contributions to FonStruct. Many of my fontstructions wouldn't be possible without his brick stacking technique. It is a massive loss to the FontStruct community. His welcomed return is anxiously awaited.
My home computer's graphics card went fut. Again. I shall examine these responses with interest.
@kix: maybe there's hope yet! Your suggestions look pretty good. I won't be able to action them until my computer comes back.
@afrojet: thanks for the encouragement! I shall certainly finish it. Coming back to it after a week off, it looks pretty good. In one sense it will be easy to finish because it's on a smallish scale. If I can just get over the tricky glyphs...
As for the notches... initially I resisted the idea of notching all the available strokes but now I think it will get around a certain heaviness where the bowls join.
@quentersen: I like your idea of flattened terminals but I think I'll wait until I've finished the whole thing, then do an alternate version, because it will radically change the appearance of the font. (As well as possibly getting round the "s" problem.)
Two fonts for the price of one!
What I'd like to talk about is the advantages of scaling. This font has an x/y scaling of 2: each brick occupies twice as much grid, in both directions. But you can also view it as a way of refining the grid down.
There are two main advantages: increased choices for x/y placement of a brick, and conservation of the curved bricks.
X/Y placement: though the bricks are twice as big, they can still be placed at any grid intersect. There's more control over character width or height, or thickness, because the grid is effectively smaller -- except it isn't!
Curve preservation: the curved bricks can be used more efficiently than in one-to-one scaling, particularly if you also use brick stacking and the half-bricks to add flavour. You can get tighter turns -- the dreaded lower case s, for instance. I'd given up on this design in a fit of pique because I couldn't get the s I wanted and was cross with myself for falling into the s-trap after all these fonts. The s I've settled on (thanks, Kix!) may not be perfect, but it's a damn sight better than it would be if I was attempting this design on a scale of one-to-one.
So although there's a period of head-scratching while you work out which blocks will obediently stack the way you want, and familiarising yourself with the single bricks-become-quadruple placeholders and the half bricks-become-single placeholders, it's definitely worth it.
My, what a convoluted sentence that was, no I'm not a German theologian.
And on that note before I learned the virtues of brickstacking (God bless you Williaum, wherever you are) I used to bleat at the Fontstruct pantheon for more bricks. But in a godlike manner they stopped their ears to my prayer. Using the works of satan however -- sorry, the undo programming glitch in Fontstruct -- I am able to get around many of the inconvenient brickless intersects that plague me.
Here endeth the lesson.
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