LITERA FACILIOR GOTI ― A 'Blackletter' script style with a twist
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Also known as Gothic script, Gothic Minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approx. the 12th untill the 17th century.

This FontStruction was aimed at mimicing the aesthetic approach of a ― ‘Textura’ variant of the Gothic Minuscule script style, more accuratly refered to as ‘Littera Textualis’. This style is most characterized by its strong sturdy letterforms, with distinguishing sharp, straight and angular features as oposed to the other variations in this catagory.

In terms of authenticity to the original predecessing formal script family, my ‘Litera Facilior Goti’ didn't took a whole lot of care for authenticity. The idea was to take a more independent and experimental approach to shaping the letters and forms, so it wasn't necessarily inspired by any specific typeface in particular, it rather recycles certain characteristics of a ‘Textualis Quadrata’, but beyond those aspects of general guidelines it evolved on its own.

Some of the areas where the design tends to really stray away from the tradition is for example the serifs:

It's often that I have some trouble with the weight ratio distribution of serifs and such elements in simplified modular based geometric Blackletter fonts. In many of such designs they tend to have been left pretty static and equal in thickness throughout the full character set. Which I think is often either having some letters look clumsy or even weird, and generally speaking also often making them appear too thick.

So this was one of the things I had to try and adress, I experimented a little with the style and forms of the serifs. Eventually this resulted in multiple deviations in variety to mix and create a more dynamic distribution. similar to what was done in less formal scripts. Over time they became ever further simplified, letterforms that involved less reorientation of the pen, in pursuit of styles that were quicker to write.

But taken as a whole typeface I find that it is having this certain ‘random-ish’ characteristic that is simply working for the better of these particular style fonts.

I'm still working on improving its overall rhymes and reasons to a certain point that is acceptable, balanced and with enough consistency. But up to this stage I personally think that the concept worked out quite successfully so far. And that even despite the fact that its stripped down of most ornamental decorative calligraphic extravaganza, it still managed to capture a convincing portion of that ‘Medieval ’ looks and personal flavour.

But I think that in the end this became a pretty neat looking font and it would classify somewhere between a hybrid mix of simplified Blacklettering and a drunken man's ‘Textualis’.

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Cheers!

REWINDER - A bold and decorative "I don't have a clue" style font.

Alternative lowercase versions for (a, c, e, g, j, m, n, o, q, s, u, v, w, y, z)

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Usually I design fonts from a general concept I have in mind and start with the Latin alphabet first since I am most familiar with these characters. Then when I have completed these I start adding extra language support. letting everything evolve from there on out into the other languages such as Cyrillic or Greek. Doing it in this fashion I find myself having the best change of doing a decent job designing characters I am not familiar with the right way and in line with the design parameters.

This time I starten designing the Cyrillic alphabet first, trying not to think about the Latin set design at all. I did this in an attempt to have a neutral mindset that wasn't influenced in doing it a certain way.

And I must admit, this was the best and most comfi time I ever did a Cyrillic set. I experienced a sense of having a lot more freedom for creative output.

The result became this cool looking "hell knows" what kind of style letterforms. I have no clue if I actually did a decent and accurate job at the Cyrillic set, and I'm not sure where to go from here on out either.

I hope you like it so far

Cheers

BACK TO THE FRAKTUR - Modular geometric calligraphic blackletter

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Calligraphy inspired design, that even though it's name can be deceptive, suggesting one in thinking it is a Fraktur derivative. Which is actually quite not the case, and as far as being a calligraphic Blackletter inspired work, the similarities between the two stop.

This is a heavily simplified and geometric take on the calligraphic style, with much more modernized letterforms as well.

It remains a WIP, but I'd love to hear what u think so far.

Cheers

BLAYDES - A modern geometric Blackletter style

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Playing around with some more experimental geometric forms for a Blackletter-ish font. It doesn't really involve or honors any actual calligraphic traditions. The font is actually just a simple geometric sans that was modified to sort of faking the looks and style of a Blackletter.

I tried replicating various elements that are traditionally seen in a Blackletter, such as: angular-styled segments such as strokes, transitions, tapered endings or serifs with a different approach. I used a set of circular shapes and variations to these in order to achieve a similar effect.

The end result sits somewhere between this obesed airport Grotesk, a contemporary Blackletter and the work of a bladesmith.

It has some very sharp and pointy tips, and for some reason this often very 'sword-like' forms.

Another calligraphic tryout.

====[ EDUCATIVE INTRO ]====

At a time when making books was a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process, an increasingly literate 12th-century Europe required more and more books. To keep up with the increasing demand for the spread of literature was a ongoing struggle. Writing materials such as inks, dyes and parchment were very expensive. And it wasn't until the 15th century, when parchment was largely replaced by paper, along with the arrival of the printing press, for it to gradually became cheaper, faster and less labor-intensive.

So it made perfect sense to find other ways to help with this process.
Simplifying a script and cutting back on the decorative calligraphy was the most effective way of doing this.

This led to the development of simplified variations to pre-existing bookhand scripts. One of such forms is littera textualis, categorizing within the Textualis/Textura or simply Gothic bookhand scripts group.

Littera textualis is the simplest and least calligraphic form of textualis. It was developed with just two main goals in mind, to save time and costs. The simplified letterforms could be written much quicker than the more calligraphic and luxurious variations. It offered a more cost effective and faster version to the script. It was often used for less important literary works and academic papers.

It functioned as the standard bookhand script in the Netherlands during the 14th & 15th centuries.

====[ ABOUT THIS FONT ]====

TEXTUALIS BATAVICUM - A calligraphic inspired Blackletter/Gothic bookhand script. Essentially a Textualis/Textura inspired work.
The design mainly follows the concept for a traditional form of littera textualis bookhand script as was described in the intro written above.

It remains a work in progress and I will add update info for this font in the comment section bellow.

Some character still need slight adjustments, but so far I am very pleased with the result. As you can probably notice, the uppercase characters have slight more weight than the lowercase has.

More characters follow soon.

I hope y'all like it

Another textualis style calligraphic blackletter / gothic script typeface.

Besides the Basic Latin character set this has a lot of special use characters and alternatives too, such as:

Ligatures, Superscript, lining (default) & oldstyled numeral forms (located in halfwidth), traditional medieval punctuation marks (located in private use). And there is even a complete, but slightly modified & smaller version of the alphabet located in the Halfwidth unicode block as well.

I hope you like it! :)

STF_Littera Textualis Emergo - A formal Gothic minuscule script.

It is finally done!

It took me around 3 full days of design work and polishing.

The major character design part is about done, and I probably will only add some additional extra ligatures and special characters.

The design approach is a large grid Faux Bezier style to get the most out of custom shaping Top/bottom grid scale is a total of 71 bricks with ascenders and descenders included.

I have done a whole lot of finalizing background work already, and many pairs have been kerned already, but not everything was done yet, this is going to be completed within the next few days.

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- Littera Textualis Emergo -

A formal Gothic minuscule that was inspired by Latin bookhand script, better known as 'Textualis'. This script was popular between the 12th & 16th century. Basically Those that would have been used for the main text of Latin books.

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A more detailed description is has been written down in a sample image posted in the comment section bellow.

I hope y'all like it as much as I do.

Cheers

It's finally done, it took me nearly 2 days to get the kerning done and balance this baby, but here she is!

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SCRIPTORIUM - A Gothic script/Blackletter typeface design with drop shadow.

Folder strips of paper style blackletter attempt. I wish I had better solutions for some charaters, but I had some tough struggles getting good looking glyphs for this style, for example uppercase T took me like 60 attemps and none ever really pleased. So I ended up with choosing the best of them en just went on with the rest. BUT, Zephram came to the rescue and delivered me a propper T, Arrrrr thanks matey!!!

Enjoy

A modernized geometric monoline gothic script design in progress.

Its a all caps design but with a double sized uppercase.

The style of design metrics made it tough to allign the punctuations so that they all fit both upper & lowercase strings, but I did it the best I could.

No numerals done yet, I might do them soon.

I hope you like it so far

Inspired by zephrams latest couple of entries!

Another calligraphy inspired blackletter-ish design.

STF_TOECUTTER - Sharp pointy sci-fi blackletter typeface.

An attempt to create a calligraphic script typeface!

FLUXING - Modern simplified geometric Blackletter