STF_GEO-PROTESQUE
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GEO-PROTESQUE - Geometric grotesque typeface
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This time I did an attempt at making a typical super rounded geometric gothic grotesque "workhorse" typeface. A sans serif style that is a very popular for headline and display text.
The idea for "Geo-Protesque" was to make a sans serif style that is strongly inspired by the pre- "International Typographic Style" -era. To dive deeper into a more decorative period of hand-lettering, pioneered mostly by architects and painters.The most important difference as oposed to today's more traditional type design, is that during tose early days of the Modernism movement lettering usually was purpose made. Each letter had a unique role within a composition, making Lettering that was meant to be used in a unique configuration. These designs occasionally didn't even had full alphabets designed. And even more rarely getting manufactured and cast into full printing typefaces.
It was mainly inspired by those sans serifs seen in vintage sign paintings and show cards designs that often were more decorative artistic takes on the general basic stylistic concept of sans-serifs, or lettering in general.
Although Geo-Protesque is essentially more of a contemporary looking design, I tried to incorporate some of that playfullness that came with these "free-form" sans serifs.
On the other hand this design sticks well within those realms where it remains faithful to simple geometric form. This created almost quirky looking letterwidth distribution in the upper set, and set somewhat of a funky rhythm. This gives the font a very strong early 1900's feel.The lower case set has a much more uniform design that works well in a piece of body-copy text.
To pull this design off properly the font was created on a large grid using the 'faux'-Bézier approach. The rest just enfolded from there on out.
The design, (obviously) a very geometric grotesque, has some nice neo-grotesque features to it as well.
While many letters mostly have even stroke width, upclose you'll notice some stroke width variation is going on after all. This to bring more contrast into certain area's. Anther design feature is the font's generous and open letter-spacing.The font is optimized for body copy in both digital and print use. Even at very small point sizes. In digital-display rendering it performs crisp even as low as 9pts. (Not bad I guess!)
Keep in mind that due to the nature in which 'faux'-Bézier curve fitting works this font might not be the best choice for a large size rendering. The linear interpolation method uses linear polynomials (straight lines) to construct glyph contours.Beware that when using this font at very large point size rendering the remnants of this process will become visible!
Cheers -
Info:Created on 15th June 2023. Last edited on 6th January 2025.
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23 Comments
Eye-catching and simply beautiful, especially the "&"
Another great work here, with lots of extra characters. As usual, you're in for very much adjusts of kerning with this... and I'd like you to take a look at the letter J when it comes after other capitals. Still looking at this pretty glyphs.
Thanks for the kind words guys!
@elmoyenique: Fixed, still there is a lot of kerning that has yet to be done. ;)
Very polished and professional looking 10/10
@NoahF: thank you for your kind words!
It's been a while since I last worked this font.. Today I have included many new kerning pairs to the font. 5160 kern-pairs in total ATM.
Frodo7's quest for improving his letter S had me wonder how far I could get one of my own in an effort to achieve best possible result.
The one to the right (in magenta) is the final version.
I undedrstand that S and s are the most challenging letters when using tool based on bricks and you already made 6 alternatives earlier, but when I consider the whole font, the new one, while it is the most pretty iteration, to me it somehow does not fit the rest of the set, where almost all loose ends of rounded letters are cut perpendicular to the local curvature (examples S, C, e, g, 5, ?). Would not geometrically most fitting form be the bottom left of those 6 in example image, (maybe little more open, with the imaginary ending guides still being connected close to center inflex point)? Please take this more like a question than a suggestion.
As was described above the idea for this was to dive deeper into a PRE-"International Typographic Style"-era of non-mechanical printing, typically done using one or more of several planographic printing techniques. Lithography was one of them that became more widely used during the mid/late 1800s for printing posters and sheet music cover illustrations. Music publishers had drawn the connection that the marketability of sheet music was directly related to the quality and artistic input of the covers. To make illustrative sheet music cover arts influenced by the story of the music. During these early stages the craft was pioneered mostly by painters, lithographers and architects. It would be the "Art Nouveau" movement that would then take the poster design world by storm and truly popularised it.
Important early pioneering illustrators were "Jules Chéret" (the father of the modern poster), "Eugène Grasset" and many others. Jules Chéret in particular would play a significant role in this. He produced a wide variety of very popular posters and turned the "advertising poster" into the art form we know today. Commonly known for his advertising posters commissioned by French-born British perfume and consumer cosmetics maker "Eugene Rimmel". Rimmel funded Chéret to open the first color lithography shop in Paris. Eugene experimented with different techniques and materials, first working in two colors, then 1869 advancing to three colors, black, red and combination color.
The focus for this lettering concept was the fascinating hand-drawn lettering that was unique to this style, and often led to innovative and original typography. Designs in which lettering concepts often shared a more decorative means and level of customization, that were typically hand-drawn original works or knock-off hand lettering of other existing printing types.
What I personally find so amazing about this specific form of typography is the weird, and unexpected nature of the lettering. When it wasn't necnecessarily a typographically skilled or educated individual. People of various trades: painters, illustrators, architects or inventors and hobbyists alike.
These could lead to new insights, that for me personally solely on my own, being this typographic educated individual, I sometimes have a hard time to still be able to imagine visually. I find these unbiased interpretations and irregularities often very refreshing, and specifically helpful in filtering this self-doctrine of educative constraints.
It had already been explained that for certain reasons this font would be somewhat of a mixed bag. Not specifically in a negative way, but certainly one to take in consideration. (Read in font description)
I think it still somewhat is looks fine. The perpendicular cut stroke endings mostly have a dominant presence in the uppercase letter set, the lowercase set has a much more dynamic typographic rhythm. This isn't all that uncommon with several, but especially early geometric grotesques. And for what it perhaps lacks in harmonic consistency, there are numerous other glyphs that neither quite strictly followed this rule by default. As said, especially in the lowercase set, i.e.: a, f, j, r, t, z, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, &, as well as most lowercase ligatures too. None of these actually truly have perpendicular cut stroke endings. But I can see where you are coming from with this observation..
Perhaps this gonna need another round,
Thanks for your comment.
Thanks for reply, it makes sense, one can find different patterns trough the set.
Best shape I think has the $ :-)
To the current s form, compare the two highlighted areas. Maybe it is just illusion, but I think the bottom inner radius could be made little smoother in the way the upper is.
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