Noptical wide

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by riccard0

Cloned from Noptical by riccard0, Noptical elder by riccard0.

40 121958

An ongoing try to use curves' radius as big as possible compared to the size of the letters. Alas, obviously without any optical correction whatsoever. Using a near square grid obviously led to a Microgramma-like appearance.
Info:

Created on 28th November 2009. Last edited on 16th October 2011.
License:

Creative Commons
Categories:
- Sans Serif
- Display
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11 Comments

A good addition to your Noptical family.

Perhaps it might be worth checking the thickness of the x and z.

Comment by p2pnut 28th november 2009

Very good. My favorite of the Nopticals. :)

Comment by jinx 28th november 2009

Thank you!
I’m aware of the thickness problem of x and z. It’s part of the ongoing struggle against the shortcomings of the tool at hand.

Comment by riccard0 28th november 2009

Ha ha, I just got it. No optical. Clever name. :-)

Comment by William Leverette (will.i.ૐ) 28th november 2009

The oblique strokes of x,z are thicker than the rest. The W is a bit anaemic: it is basically 2x of the short V. The Y is different at the top ends than the X. You may consider to upscale your letters by 4x or more so as to solve these problems.

Comment by Frodo7 29th november 2009

Thank you all for the constructive (!) criticism.
I’m in the process of updating the extended latin and alternates.
@Frodo7: I think I was afraid to going too wide… Which is ironic, given the typeface’s name.
Anyway, I fixed both the W and the Y (which really needed it!). The fix for the Y wasn’t the best for consistent spacing, but either that or some funky connection between arms and stem.
About upscaling: either I'm missing something fundamental, or upscaling will prevent me from using curves (which is the base of the Noptical experiment).

Comment by riccard0 29th november 2009

At first I didn’t take Frodo7 to mean it, since he mentions 4x, but your question lead me to reconsider if it is at all possible to upscale here without losing the roundedness. Of course it is, by setting the advanced filter to 2 x 2! Well sort of, anyway. ;)

If you put a good deal of elbow grease and mousing into “upscaling” this-a-way, you can get your x to look more like this:

Comment by William Leverette (will.i.ૐ) 29th november 2009

Haha, err, you can make that same x above with careful use of brickstacking. :)

Comment by William Leverette (will.i.ૐ) 29th november 2009

Thanks will.i.ૐ. That could be one possible way to go. There is no easy solution, though. The other less elegant way is to use existing bricks and make the curves polygonal. This is the only known solution above a certain radius. With a little experimentation it could result in quite nice "curves".

Comment by Frodo7 29th november 2009

@will.i.ૐ: I haven’t yet experimented with the advanced filter, because it seems to me that it introduces as many problems as the ones it helps resolving! ;-)
By the way, I didn’t knew about “brickstacking”. Its use is a bit awkward, but it can resolve half of my problems! :-)
@Frodo7: In time I will try it too…

Comment by riccard0 29th november 2009

I tend to agree with riccard0 that 2:2 filters introduces as many problems as the ones it helps resolving!

As far as I can see it just makes your working grid twice as large, without offering any improvement to the ability to create curves etc. (apart from a slight edge if you are using the quarter-round curved brick itself).

I'm sure that, eventually, one would get used to the fact that 2:2 bricks have to be placed in strange, offset positions - but the biggest drawback of all is that it makes moving highlighted selections of bricks so damned frustrating ... often taking half a dozen goes (or more!) before 'capturing' the highlighted area.

Comment by p2pnut 30th november 2009