My final entry in the competition. Inspired by Mazey, zlabyrinths eYe/FS, and wavelength. Each glyph has its own maze, and each maze connects with the next. Tilde ~ and low line _ connect words, grave ` closes beginnings and ends, and the left and right arrows < > are for the start and end. There are also some alternates in Extended Latin A. Suggestions and critiques are welcome. Thanks!
UPDATES:
04/06/14 The whole font has been updated to be one brick taller, and thus properly fit onto a grid. Also, some characters have been redesigned. V2.0
05/13/14 All punctuation has been modified to continue a word maze. V2.1
07/05/14 1000 downloads! Hooray! As a 'thank you', I've completed more of More Latin. V2.2
08/22/14 I've made the accents part of the maze. I've also changed a few characters, and added Œ and œ. V2.3
08/04/15 Added Polish support with Ą, Ć, Ę, Ł, Ń, Ś, Ź, and Ż. Tweaked a few characters as well, and added a crossbar to the ð. V2.4
06/18/16 Added support for multiple languages with more Cyrillic chars and punctuation. Also tweaked a few chars.
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_BUISJESIncluding cyrillic (to native cyrillic users about my glyphs: help & comments are welcomed, please). Some kerning is in process. See also zendera smallcaps eYe/FS.
STF_EIN BERLINER - Condensed geometric sans-serif typeface.
Inspired by the lettering seen on a variety of different Dutch and German street signs.
The simple and clean geometric letterforms provide this typeface with a strong legibility in both display & body style text.
(grid size 3,5 × 7 at 2x2 brick size filter)
Enjoy
This font is a free download, but some use is prohibited without contacting me first. Please abide by the readme which is included in the download! Thanks.
The Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) was the largest agency of FDR's "New Deal", employing millions of people. Over 2,000 posters were produced by the W.P.A. to raise awareness and support the arts.
I have a lot of admiration for these posters and a style of sign painters' lettering (sometimes called “gas-pipe”) that was common in the U.S. during the 1930s-'40s. WPA Gothic gets much of its inspiration from this poster in particular. This FontStruction stays true to the sample’s simple letterforms, but the FontStruct grid does present a few limitations. For more refined typefaces in this style check out DDC Hardware, Futura Display, FF Golden Gate Gothic, Refrigerator, and MVB Solano Gothic by some of my favorite type designers, two of which (Parkinson and Van Bronkhorst) are East Bay natives.
WPA Gothic has a few alternate glyphs hanging out in the Extended Latin slots with more to come.
To get a look at the typeface outside the confines of the FontStruct sampler, here's a sample poster.
May 25, 2008: Released a variation with low-waisted "deco" caps.
2019: 10 year anniversary update!
– Loosened the spacing a tad more.
– Added a few punctuation marks, including dashes, bullets, and inverted question/exclamation marks.
– Tightened ‘f’ spacing.
– Lengthened the quotes and apostrophes. They were so wee!
– And I fixed that Å! It’s not pretty, but it’s a ring.
This font was inspired by the works of Christophe Szpajdel (Lord of the Logos, 2010, Die Gestalten Verlag), as well as by the film trilogy and the following game titles (e.g. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, 2014) based on Tolkien's epic masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. Given the game theme, and the 48 bricks vertical limit, I thought more or less around pixel art, or pixel fonts. This is my endeavour to make a spiky blackletter in Szpajdel's black metal style that evokes the terror of Mordor at pixel level. This font has been extensively tested for best kerning, yet some issues might have remained unresolved.
This is a cloneThe ultra-low resolution of this grid may be difficult to grasp without cloning. Fontstruct’s logo has a nominal x-height of 3 bricks, by comparison.
The level of detail, control, and finesse possible in a given fonstruction depended mostly on resolution prior to the recent advent of stackable composites. Did you want it better? Make it bigger!
Brute force, now meet Elegance.
Instead of building individual glyphs hundreds of bricks tall, stackable composites allow us to design rich modular schemata hundreds of bricks deep. Using curved bricks at their largest scale, linear and curvilinear elements dynamically harmonize and oppose. As well, screen fonts can be effectively hinted (aside from notable lack of kerning controls) without sacrificing the integrity of joins and intersections. And the trapping possibilities, Oh the sweet sweet trapping possibilities...
Please, vote kindly and stay tuned for more :)
This is a cloneCaps only font. You can use the glyphs placed at the lowercase to add a different second letter in pairs like EE, FF, LL, NN, OO, SS, TT, ZZ, etc. and to avoid graphic repetitions in a single word or phrase. Extra "c" at the "¢" glyph. (NB: To create this one I have greatly exaggerated the method used by my admired Beate -sorry, Maestra- in her font db Whisper, which successfully simulated hand-drawn letters.)
Don't worry, this is not a font, this is a picture game. Please, type any uppercase character in the user input window from A to T, then the same character but in the lowercase and then press the space before repeat the operation with other character that you want: Aa (space) Bb (space) Cc (space)... And... Surprise! Here you are my crazy pixel friends. After this, you can mix the characters and play a little bit more creating some funny "monsters": Bd (space) Hp (space) Pt... There are 400 variations to try. Enjoy them!
Make the letters any width desired.
Type the uppercase letter for the left half of the letter, type an extender (or not), then type the same lowercase letter for the right half of the letter. The more extenders are inserted between the left and the right halves, the wider the letter becomes.
I and T are the exceptions where the extenders are typed before and after the left and right halves and not inbetween.
The other exceptions are M and W which have been split into 3 and extenders are added between the left, middle and right thirds.
? is split between ? and /
Extenders are located at @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) and _
How to extend:
A@@a, B##b, C$$c, D$$d, E##e, F%%f, G$$g, H^^h, &&Ii&&, J**j or J**$$j, K^^k, L**l, M(({((m, N((n, O$$o, P@@p, Q$$q, R%%r, S##s, (((Tt))), U**u, V**v, W**}**w, X^^x, Y^^y, Z__z, ?@@/
VON 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)