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.
A FUTURISTIC LETTER “A”!!
MY FUNNY LETTER “K”!!
AN OVER-EXTENDED EM DASH!!
WEIRD UPSIDE-DOWN CYRILLIC LETTERS THAT NOBODY’S HEARD OF!!
IT’S ALL HERE IN MY NEW FONT — ALDRON.
I THOUGHT THAT THIS FONT NEEDED MORE ATTENTION THAN THE ONE THAT I CLONED IT FROM, WHICH WAS MADE IN A COUPLE OF HOURS. AS WELL AS ADDING THE LATIN AND GREEK ALPHABETS, I MADE A FEW ADDITIONS AND ADJUSTMENTS TO THE CYRILLIC LETTERS AS WELL AS SPACING. AND UNLIKE ITS PREDECESSOR, THIS ONE IS KERNED.
IT WAS QUITE A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE, ACTUALLY, ADAPTING A CYRILLIC FONT FOR LATIN INSTEAD OF VICE VERSA.
INTENDED LANGUAGE SUPPORT
• БЕЛАРУСКАЯ МОВА — BELARUSIAN
• БЪЛГАРСКИ — BULGARIAN
• HRVATSKI — CROATIAN
• ČEŠTINA — CZECH
• ENGLISH
• ESPERANTO
• DEUTSCH — GERMAN
• ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ — GREEK
• ITALIANO — ITALIAN
• ҚАЗАҚША — CYRILLIC KAZAKH
• МАКЕДОНСКИ — MACEDONIAN
• TE REO MĀORI
• ROMÂNĂ — ROMANIAN
• РУССКИЙ — RUSSIAN
• SRPSKI, СРПСКИ — LATIN AND CYRILLIC SERBIAN
• SLOVENČINA — SLOVAK
• SLOVENŠČINA — SLOVENIAN
• УКРАЇНСЬКА — UKRAINIAN
AVAILABLE CHARACTERS (★✰*ALL KERNED YAY!!!!!✰*✪)
LATIN: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ĀÁÂÄĂĆČĈĎĐDŽĒÉÈǴĜĤĪÍÎĴĹĽLJŃŇNJŌÓÒÔÖŔŘŚŠŜȘẞŤȚŪÚÜŬŮÝŹŽ
GREEK: ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ ΆΈΉΊΪΌΎΫΏ
CYRILLIC: АБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ ӘЀЃҐҒЂЄЅЍІЇЈЌҚЉҢЊӨЋЎҮҰҺЏ
THE NUMBERBET: 0123456789
PUNCTUATION: ()[]!?.…:;,„“”‘’-—«»*• AND OF COURSE, SPACE
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_BUISJESTEFlonALuminium — A contemporary geometric sans-serif
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Inspired by the brand logo for French kitchen and home appliances company 'Tefal'.
The font is an extrapolation from the five letters that make up the original logo. I have made some small changes to certain characters to make them more suitable for a full font and body copy text format.
I hope you like it..
Cheers
This is a cloneFauxhaus — Geometric minimalist modernism sans-serif design
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[INSPIRATION]
As the name already suggests, this indeed was inspired by the Bauhaus-typograpy towards functionality style.
More specifically by Austrian artistic polymath Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental "Universal" alphabet.
The alphabet he designed became somewhat synonymous with the school's identity, and probably is the most well known Bauhaus typeface, and truly epitomizing that typical simplified "Form follows function" Bauhaus-minimalism style. It was also used for the new Bauhaus-building signage.
Some key features in Bayer's original form are those easily recognizable geometric sans-serif letterings, with letter composition based on strong basic geometry, having eliminated all decorative elements of the letterform composition for that crisp industrial, slight mechanical minimalist aesthetic. Bayer's original Universal alphabet also eliminated the need for a upper case letter, further simplifying it towards more of a functionality-driven standardization. Bayer developed multiple revisions and variations of the alphabet. Sadly Universal was never cast as a font, as during that era they weren't manufactured into printing typefaces, and the designs would only exist as drafts (as was the case with all Bauhaus-typefaces). Nonetheless it served as a lettering model for Bauhaus students, colleagues, and followers alike, and they were regularly re-used for signs, book covers and publications by many of its members, but even beyond institution walls the typographic style began to gain a foothold. Throughout the years we have seen a multitude of revivals and other Bauhaus-inspired typeface designs. Some of which that try to be faithful digitizations of the original, whereas others taking a more artistic approach to the style by providing their own personalized reinterpretation of the Bauhaus-aesthetic. So even to this day, many decades later, it repeatedly continues to inspire and influence designers time and again.
Bayer, First a student and later junior master of the printing workshop, was one of Bauhaus’s most influential attendees, advocating the integration of all arts throughout his career. Though not trained as a typographer, he was also assigned with the task of creating a universal visual & typographic identity for the school.—a task Bayer took very serious.Sparking perhaps the most mythic typeface to ever come out of the Bauhaus, which is "Universal"—one that at that time strove to be as idealistic as the school itself
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[THE "FAUXHAUS" FONT]
This is an artistic reinterpretation of Bayer's "Universal" alphabet.
Aiming to preserve the unmistakable style and simplistic geometric stylistic properties of the original, while in the same time allowing a more 'free-form'-approach towards crafting the letterform compositions. This of-course as long as they remains in-line with the stylistic properties of the original. And for the lack of having a better explanation;
—To do sort-of a 'faithfully different' artist depiction of Bayer's original Universal alphabet.
Some notable differences made in Fauxhaus compared to Universal are the re-introduction of a upper case form and the slight de-simplification and inclusion of subtle decorative nuance.
In some cases I've choosen to compose certain specific characters to be more or less identical as to how Bayer originally intended them, whereas others may be entirely different looking. And for some characters have one or more alternative form as well. Some of which are more 'ad hoc'- compositions drawn as we went when new ideas popped up. But others were specifically created to preserve and / -or include certain distinctive and unmistakably identifiable letterforms from Bayer's original Universal alphabet.
Greek & Cyrillic characters included in Fauxhaus were solely added for my personal experimentation purpose only, and they serve 'zero' function as to additional language support of the font.
"Use at your very own risk"— as these could very easily be gone the very next update.
Each letterform was meticulously composed from a random collection of the various memories, which after some thirty Bauhaus-inspired and / -or -revival works including their respective 'shared' research I have accumulated over time for Bauhaus typography like Bayer's work.
No source reference image was used as guidance for creating this FontStruction, everything came straight from the knowledge I gathered from the many previous Bauhaus related projects I did.
So to draw solely from memory alone somewhat a convincing and reasonably similar personal reinterpretation of an original 'Bauhaus' typeface at this stage has gotten pretty easy for me.
For this project in particular I've choosen to construct the letterforms on a medium sized grid, using the linear interpolation 'faux'-Bézier method. So beware that when using this font at very large point size rendering the remnants of this process will become visible!
That's all for now, I hope you like it so far,
Cheers
This is a cloneReload your brain, ask about everything. Our Future begins in... 3... 2... 1... NOW! NB: Better writing with uppercase. Three alternatives (B, F, T) to improve readability in certain cases are in the lowercase.
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.
Caps 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.)
Based on an old glyph by the magnificent and always amazing Master geneus1. Caps only. You can find an extra A at the "a" glyph and a little C placed at the "®". See also the grey version.
This is a clone of zalida 3D eYe/FSVAN NELLE (Blueprint) — Geometric modernist sans
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☛ THE SOURCE
A re-interpretation of the 1926 geometric sans serif alphabet system reproduction by Jacob Jongert, published in a 1930 sourcebook by N.J. van de Vecht. The geometric uppercase set of the alphabet system is what would later become the famous sans serif capitals which he used for lettering throughout many of his Van Nelle materials.
☛ THE FONTSTRUCTION
Attempt at making a convincing recap of the original alphabet by Jacob Jongert as it was shown in the 1930s sourcebook, and extrapolate that into a full functional font. The decision to go with a small grid sparked a number of limitations in terms of the design freedom that forced some inevitable changes. But the general idea sort of became not to make it a revival, but rather more or less a faithful revision. One that would still be instantly recognizable yet didn't necessarily had to be all about accuracy.
☛ —The small grid design made sure this wasn't happening anyway!
But, for instance, the most striking difference between the two fonts (their weight) in fact is such a byproduct for one of those limitations. Something FS's small grid couldn't properly reproduce, so VAN NELLE (Blueprint) has a slight stronger weight, making the font somewhat of a bold style version of the original. This in addition provided me with slight extra freedom to inplement a little personal touch for further manicure of the font's finer details. Which allowed me to cope with some of the optical clunkiness that come with a fatter face and the grid based design.
Besides these circumstantial differences, which were basically beyond my control, I've also made some intentional changes to make the typeface more practical to use. The changes include things like the significantly lowered ascender height, the slight different width for certain letters, larger tittle (dot above i, j & ij), and several more. despite these changes I believe it very much still reflects what Jongerts once invisioned for the system.
☛ SOME NOTES ON THE ORIGINAL AND ITS CREATOR
Jacob Jongert(1883-1942) was a advertising designer from the Netherlands. After varied studies, including being Roland Holst’s assistant and an acquaintance and colleague of S. H. de Roos [who brought the Arts & Crafts ideas of William Morris to the Netherlands and devoted his career to book design and typography] with whom Jongert experimented with several printing techniques and discovered graphic design as his ideal art form.
¶ In 1923 Jongert rolled in a unique and long-term collaboration with the Van Nelle company, where he became head designer, a position he held until 1940. The Van Nelle company had an extremely modern approach towards advertising (they even commissioned Cassandre to do a poster) and Jongert created for the firm a recognizable image with clear shapes, powerful letters and primary colours, totally Dutch avant-garde in style, and with a strict and rigorous approach directly linked to De Stijl principles. The corporate identity he created has become a milestone in the design world.
¶ The lettering, however, is the driving force that ties it all together. The style is a straightforward set of plain, mono-linear, sans serif capitals in a style that just started to come into fashion in the late 1920s, early 1930s with the rise of functionalism and geometric type design. Yet, while these ideas were already thrown out there, its clever simplicity plus the systematic and cohesive way Jongert implemented his lettering was unusual at the time. The square and minimal construction of the forms allowed the letters to contract and expand to fit any situation, yet maintain a consistent and recognizable appearance throughout the Van Nelle line. ¶ Something we only recently have learned to appreciate is to see his hand crafted system amid the current advancements in variable-font technology, which offers a similar kind of flexibility to typeface designs. A quality that certainly placed him well ahead of its time.
What I particulary like about Jongert's original is the stuff that is going on in the lowercase set of the alphabet, which are those quirky lowercase letter inventions that are different from the more traditional modernist sans, but sadly the lowercase letters were pretty much never used in his works.
I created a simple PDF typeface specimen for those who want to see the high-resolution preview.
PDF SPECIMEN WAS DELETED
Thats all Folks ☚
☛ Cheers
STF GROOTESK Pro ― Contemporary geometric grotesque
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A clean and geometric grotesque sans-serif typeface that is equipped with tons of extended professional editorial typographic features,
such as:
Multilingual support in 3 script writing systems for 113 languages, glyph alternative forms, stylistic ligatures, accents and punctuation marks, symbols, technical, ordinal, pictographs, additional dingbats.
15164 stored kerning-pair and many other professional features!
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[ TECHNICAL ]
■ Metrics(in square grid units)
5.0-Em / 0.5-Stroke
2.0 : 2.0-Brick Size Filter
Em-Square: 5.0
Cap-Height: 3.25
X-Height: 2.0
Ascent: 0.875
Descent: 1.0
Overshoots: 2 × 0.0625 Top/Bottom - (uppercase only)
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■ [ ADDITIONAL EXTRA IMPORTANT RELEASE NOTES ]
Previously published as a (non-Pro)-version with the same name.
But when that version eventually corrupted, it rendered it useless.
And after several repair attempts the innitial isolated "FS-editor" native
brick corruption eventually was fixed! But from this point onward all theFontStruct-generated-*.TTF-files downloaded from this particular FontStruction delivered a broken TrueType-font file, that upon its installation process resulted in having a error. Leaving me, or anyone for that matter who had downloaded it, unable to get it or its updates installed.
So after unsuccesfull struggling for a while I noticed that the cloned version didn't generate a broken *.TTF-file. So I decided to terminated the original FontStruction and delete it.
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■ [ DESIGN INFORMATION ]
The main inspiration came from those early to mid-20th century geometric grotesques, and visual environment of that era.
Although the characters were mostly geometrically constructed, and remain as close as possible to basic geometry, "STF GROOTESK Pro" includes a blend of stylish hints of hand-crafted lettering influences and intentional irregularities in order to tribute those classical geometric designs.
For extra additional emphasis the design tries to take advantage of a rather unusual vertical Uc>Lc proportion, with ascender parts of the 'Lc' characters sitting well bellow the cap-height, making the 'Uc' appear strikingly taller in comparison. Essentially providing the uppercase with a more "Condensed" feel. Some of the other characteristics of the design are it's sturdy and stylish yet clean presence, with little to no contrast, and it comes in bold style only. But to compensate for the lack of extra weight versions there was some serious time invested into additional testing and optimizing the entire typeface. So it is super well mastered and therefor extremely versatile.
That being said..
Looks can be deceptive at quick first glance, and this indeed might appear as being a very basic looking design. Even though this in fact is far from being just that other basic looking display sans, nor your next boring geometric grotesque!
From a FontStructor-perspective point-of-view I recommend to take a more ‘close-up’ view of the design's finer details. This creates a better understanding and greater appreciation for the extreme level of complexity that is present in both form and function.
Zooming-in on some of the letters would reveal the font's subtle, yet nuanced diversity of that 'previously' hidden underlying personal characteristics that usually remain invisible in text format at smaller point size. Now suddenly just its overall care for finer detail and overall quality within every bit of the design, the tons of custom shaping, stroke transitions and additional smoothing will gradually emerge as zoom levels get ever deeper. At its deepest level it will even shed some light on the surgical stuff that mostly works invisibly and without the awareness of its reader.
A display typeface at it's core, still it performs equally great in very small body-print text or web design application, as it does too in larger format for headings, ads or branding.
Thus providing, this very function efficient and reliable work-horse,
a truly genuine "one style fits all" typeface powerhouse.
And there its no question whether this could hand out "a 'one-punch' K.O." of a Headliner, thats obvious. But this unyielding bumpy behemoth just as well takes u for the long run, effortlessly telling you fascinating stories.
Especially well cared for optimized rendering on a computer display device, and deliver simple yet versatile seemless digital typeset material.
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■ [ SPECIAL NOTE ]
A big thanks and 50% of the design credits for the lowercase 's' go out to elmoyenique
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■ [ "Pro" VERSION EXTRA'S ]
The new "Pro" version update for GROOTESK utilizes several TrueType smart-font features and control characters to map two or more glyphs for combining glyph composition.