The design process is typical in its atypicality (yes, it is a word, or, at least, should be!).
The atypicality necessitates the telling of the story behind it.
Looking for something to do...something easy to do, I came across the font shown 5th from the top in this article on Dieline. "I can do this," thought I. I did a 2 that looked similar. Based on that, did the 3. 5 6 9. 0 8. 1 7. "Hmm." Add the horizontal stripes. 7. 4? "No." Re-4? "No. Another 4? Perhaps thinner sides?" "Even thinner." "Hmm." Redo 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9. "Maybe this is better. OK, lets do the letters." Start with Z because it is almost a 2 with minor curve tweak. Do the S. B because 3 is done. A. V. C. E. F L. J. Etc.
The glyphs so far have a 3 horizontal band appearance. Do the lowercase. a is two bands. b is two bands...but how high should the ascender be? Also, the x-height seems wrong. Off somehow. "Can I do a 2 band uppercase with the letter slightly taller. Maybe 2 bricks taller?"
Redo A. Redo B. "No this B is not working." Redo B. Redo B. Redo B. "Hmm. Maybe." Redo C D. Redo E F L. "OK, this might work." Redo to all uppercase letters.
Do the lowercase. "Yes I like the new f." Redo other letters to include the flip. Most of the letters are the same width. "Maybe I can make this a mono-space font." Redo m. Redo M. W. V. "The A looks odd." Redo A. And so on.
The font may have started as a simple thing but it is very different now. "I'll just publish it." "No, I should at least do the basic punctuations." "No this hyphen is too thick." Redo. "Now it is too thin." Redo. "Now it is too wide. But this is mono-space font. The width cannot be altered." +. "That just looks weird." Redo +. Now the - looks off. Redo -. Now they both don't fit with the rest of the font. Redo + -. "No. I'll come back to them." Do [. "No that's too heavy top and bottom." Redo [. Do (. "This needs a different curve." Redo (. "Can I use this new curve somewhere else?" Redo @. "Hmm." Do ©. Do ®. Do ™. Do “. "I can't make this so wide." Do ‘. "Definately cannot make it mono-space." Redo all punctuation to be their natural width. "This is no longer a mono-space font. Should I redo M m W w to be more natural?" Redo do m. "No this is too much work. I can't be bothered anymore. Let the m's and w's be."
"The punctuation looks niiice. Should I do a font to match these?"
Create New FontStruction
WORK IN PROGRESS! SUGGESTIONS AND TOP PICK ARE WELCOME
See more:
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/44117/mad_decent
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1739315/baldiozh
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1725534/ermak-1
https://olohgram.gumroad.com/
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1745326/beast-under-the-bed
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1631323/robots-in-space
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1243391/speed-shop
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1292787/brambled-metric
Where are the caps? Who cares? A bold, minimal-grid font so named because it looks sort of jellybeany. Kind of. I'm still not sure I like how dark the 'k' seems, but any fix looks worse. If there's demand, I'll add an accented set, perhaps.
«Update 2017-03-29» – I've reworked the aforementioned K. I've changed the lowercase to be a thinner version, along with much of the punctuation. I've even filled out the Latin-1 Supplement, though I loosen up considerably on the basic design elements to get things to work within the established grid.