04.04.20. Lockdown 2020.
Lockdown doesn't mean you cant level up.
It doesn't have to feel like you're behind bars.
It could be used as a time for personal transformation.
Affecting your outer world by expressing your inner world.
Fonstructing can be a meditative experience.
It all depends on your perspective.
You can fontstruct as a way of creating cool fonts,
or you can see it as creative expression that forms letters,
that spawn words, that serve as the visualization of thought
that manifests deeper meaning. Or not.
Peace, Health, and Wellness to all!
Fontstuff:
Uppercase = worn down brick walls
Lowercase = plain walls
| = 4 bars
- = 1 bar
( & ) = Bent pipes open/close
{ & } = Scaled pipes open/close
I was looking for an excuse to play around with color layers, so I colorized one of my old Dingbot designs.
This is a clone of Dingbots and Monsters XLFleurella - Simple modern yet elegant sans-serif typeface design.
WIP (See discription in the comment sections sample image posted bellow.
What I forgot to mention is that the big decorated "fleurella" monogram is in fact an experimental different weight that might become a new font.
All the decorative ornamental parts (animals, plants) are located in the "The Private Use Area (PUA)"
Accessing them on Windows is easiest using Character Map
- Start Menu, type ‘character map’ and select the relevant app
Cheers
This is a cloneLITERA 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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― No filters used!
Cheers!
This is a cloneBODINI BALWAUM (Regular) — Didone-style 18th century modern serif
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Dobini Balwaum (Regular) is a Didone, or modern, serif typefaces, inspired by the works of Bodoni, Didot and Walbaum.
This is the solid (or regular) style for the Dobini Balwaum typeface.
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In an attempt at getting that typical sophisticated look, the letters have been provided with a stylish mixture of various different designed Serif attributes.
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═════] Type elements ]
Serifs
• Foot—abrupt (unbracketed) bilateral hairline
• Spur—adnate (wedged) unilateral reflexive
Terminals
• ball/beak/barb/flag/ear/finial/tail terminals & spurs
Apex
• pointed cup
═════] Glyph alternate forms ]
Letters:
• a & g—double- & single-storey"a" and loop-tail & fish-hook"g" sets
• K k & R—curved & straight legged letter alternate sets
• u & w—unilateral reflexive & bilateral hairline alternate spur sets
• x—alternate asymmetrical lowercase letter
• J & j—narrower glyphs alternates
• t (2x)—stylistic alternates
• s—alternate form with slight wider top section
═════] Text figures ]
• (default)Old Style—(non-lining)
• (alt 1) Modern—(lining)
• (alt 2) "Didot" Old Style—(non-lining)
═════] Optical corrections ]
• top/bottom curve overshoot
• tapered transitions for shoulders & arc of stems
• stroke-weight compensation for horizontals
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I hope you like it so far,
Cheers
This is a clone of STF_DOBINI BALWAUM (Inline)DAN NIET — Futuristic rounded sans
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This is a recreation of Svetoslav Simov's Dan typeface that was published by Fontfabric back in 2010.
A while ago I came across some image that used this cool futuristic geometric sans. And without first doing proper research I started to FontStruct the lettering seen in the image. Once those were completed I didn't really had a good vision on where to lead the rest of the letter inventions, so I went looking online to find something similar that perhaps could get me inspired to complete it after all.
Scouring the web for a while I stumbled upon some sample images for a typeface called DAN by Svetoslav Simov. And it was unmistakably the font seen in the initial image that I used for the first couple of letters.
Now, I could've abandoned the project at this stage and take my loss, but I felt that the work that already had been done up to this point would be a sad waste of something that was actually kind of fun to make. So for this reason I decided to go ahead and continue the project, and instead this time the focus shifted towards recreating the original DAN typeface.
I included a number of small changed to certain letterforms to suite my personal preference better, but it very much remains Svetoslav's work.
Because the original DAN typeface is a commercial product this recreation won't be made available for downloading. It was strictly made for the fun of it, with no intent to redistribute. It was published solely as a showcase of the FontStruct editor's capabilities.
I dubbed the project DAN NIET which is Dutch forTHEN DON'T.
This sort of as a wordplay to the original's name and it's off-limit legally restricted status, hence the inclusion ofDON'T.
— It still remains a WIP..
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DISCLAIMER:I hereby state that I do not own the rights to this, and all rights belong to it's original owner. Credits for the original lettering concept go to the creator. No Copyright Infringement Intended.
Cheers
BUISJES — Geometric outlined sans-serif design
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[ INTRODUCTION ]
While at first I was just updating one of my custom brick tool sets with some additional new pre-build custom composite bricks which seemlessly fit and allign with the dimensions of FontStruct's default connection brick set, the font more or less materialized as this happy accident while I was fooling around and constructed several basic letterforms and shapes for testing these composite brick solutions I was making.
Before realizing it I had about half-a-alphabet's worth of random letter doodles. From there on out I simply decided to copy the letters that came from this test run and drop them into a new FontStruct project and just resumed building the remainder of what would later become this rather modernist clean looking geometric outline sans.
Now, keep in mind that working with the constraints of these (largely 'Composite'-like) and somewhat oddball physically natured 'Connection'-bricks is very limited, and can be quite tricky. They simply doesn't allow the same level of design freedom FS's 'Core'-bricks do (E.g. the centre allignement, their thickness and that 30-bricks-only limited palette size for each of the three variations). To acquire some of that more distinctive and specific tailor made geometry usually requires clever brick arrangements that consist from a mixture of both multi-stacked-composites and brick overlaps to patch gaps and smoothen curve contours.
This process can sometimes become very 'trial / error' -based and unpredictable when complexity increases. Distracting at times, as it gets in the way of primary objectives. To constantly having to invent different new solutions that work simply doesn't help creative workflow. Therefor I decided to dive a little deeper into expanding my pre-fabricated'ready-to-use' composite brick palette.
[ ANALYTICS ]
So far I'm very pleased with the final result, especially with how easy this new set of custom brick composites turn out to create new letters. The bricks feel very intuitive to work with, and unlock quick access to greater sophistication and shaping of more complex geometry. Opening up several new possibilities that are impossible to construct solely from the default 'Connection' -brick palette. So having them at my disposal in a pre-fab fashion is certainly gonna help streamline the workflow.
[ THE FONT ]
As far as for the font's aesthetica, there isn't all that much spectacular going on really. The basic geometry provides a rigid solid looking lettering that produces this fairly legible text. The modern yet clean characteristics making it the perfect match for a broad range application.
• Multi-Lingual (105 languages supported)
• Some glyph alternate forms
• Kerning (1922 stored pairs)
The font name refers to its tubular characteristics and comes from the Dutch word Buizen, which literally translate to Tubes in English.
I hope you like it,
Cheers
This is a cloneWestmobster NRC — Magnetic Ink Character Recognition style
A typeface design inspired by the MICR aesthetics style.
I haven't checked and compared this against any of the others already in existence, but due to this it's obvious that this is going to share several resemblances with other similar fonts that are out there.
But I'm pretty confident that this isn't just your next Westminster or Data70.
Just to point out one of the unmistakable difference here for example, is the more distinct Sci-Fi characteristic, which is especially strong within it's uppercase set.
This sort of fonts have been strongly associated with computers technology, especially in the late 1960s and early-to-mid 1970s. Nowdays these lettering concepts are frequently used to indicate computer involvement in television series, films, books, music fashion and several other media.
In the 1960s, the MICR fonts became a symbol of modernity or futurism, leading to the creation of look-a-like "computer" typefaces that imitated the appearance of the MICR fonts.
It still requires some minor adjustment and tweaks, but the global concept is finished.
Let me know what you think,
Cheers
JS-SANS ROUNDED ― Geometric Sans-Serif
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Another font addition to the ever evolving and growing collection of revivals and inspired works called LETTERS OP MAAT, a project celebrating and trying to recreate the typographic contributions originally designed by Dutch graphic designer Jurriaan Schrofer. This time I did a revision based on a alphabet system Schrofer originally created somewhere during the late 1960s.
Its a simple, yet solid and clean looking geometric sans-serif style with medium contrast on its vertical axis. The alphabet as it originally was created by Schrofer featured a Lowercase (A-Z) character set with Small Caps figures (numerals) only, no symbols or punctuation marks were included.
This particular lettering was used in many of his work, such as book designs, brochure and post-stamps, so there is no shortage of resource material on the internet for this alphabet system. Over the course of its existence it was constantly evolving, and Schrofer kept expanding the alphabet system with additional new weights and slight variations. But during his time with Mouton & Co. the concept basics for this sans system became one of his workhorse letterings, and saw widespread application, with appearances dating back as early as 1968, when Schrofer developed the designs for the 1969 Dutch post-stamp.
I've already done a revival for this alphabet back in 2018. This was during my first year of joining FontStruct, so therefore the first revival attempt now seems more like an insult to Schrofer's brilliance rahter than a tribute.
Pointing out some of the flaws present in the old recap:
Certain key design characteristics weren't extrapolated properly throughout all of the required letters or were missing completely (imo. this is one aspect of a font revival the designer at least has to do right). Its Uppercase forms looked as if they did actually belong to another font all together, back then no additional Lining figures were included that would suit the newly added Uppercase letters, and only a handful of very poorly crafted symbols and punctuation marks was included. As a matter of fact, it was only just the second Schrofer work I ever digitalized. So yeah...
— Now five years later the time had arrived for the rematch.
And this time I wasn't going to enter the tekken as the new farmhand or a lazy dog. But came well prepared to battle that grumpy wizard as a quick brown fox. Five boxing muscles flexed and sufficient toxic brews at hand, but above all.. A postgraduate academic with a Master's degree in "DIY FontStructivism" at the university of Home. So there weren't many very exquisite codfish eggs to judge my fizzy vow. Jack proved strong, but picking only six quinces, unable to quickly fax Judge Pat, he eventually been left a puzzled women, and so I jumped jewels when I was crowned the Sphinx's evil Queen Fredericka.
— I think that is summarizing it all very neatly.
But, just in (lower), case, here is a "Give me Gum-Gum-" explanation for all you rocket scientists among us:
For this revision I only used Schrofer's original red / white alphabet sample composition. Sticking with just one resource made sure I kept a non-biased vision for extrapolating the remainder of the character set. This simply because shear amount of variations that Schrofer had contributed to this alphabet system would make it difficult to consistently combine everything into one complete work.
I reproduced and included all Schrofer's lowercase characters and numerals as were shown in his original composition. From that point out I designed the rest of the font myself as faithful I possibly could. Yet in the end two major change were made to my recap in relation to Schrofer's original that aren't typically very desirable in a revival and therefore not recommend when strictly aiming at reviving a original work, but in the case of this Schrofer alphabet in terms of how it was provided by himself it was rather wisdom than that it was madness.
Let me explain what changes were made and what effect they have in terms of to what extend it deviates away from technically speaking still classifying as a revival. First of all, his original Lowercase letter f is very interruptive in a line of text. Up to a point that is really taking a toll on its overall aesthetics. So I modified the original ever so slighty, basically all I did was decreasing the length of the horizontal crossbar a tad bit so that it would allow additional kerning for the character to eliminate the issue it innitially created. I relocated Schrofers original form into the Full Width Unicode block as alternative form.
The other major change was essentially the complete redesign of numerals forms. I replaced Schrofer's original Small Caps figures with a new set of newly designed Lining figures to be the font's default figures, making the default text figures a far better match for the newly introduced Uppercase alphabet letters. Schrofers Small Caps forms are still in there, but now relocated to the Full Width Unicode block as glyph alternative forms as well.
Both of which affect the font's innitial physical appearance, but thanks to some rearranging of segments within the character set neither will have effect on the reviving part of the project, since all of Schrofer's original letterforms are still included and available for use. But this was done to bring a certain level of harmony and logic to the piece from a typeface-standard perspective. So technically this would classify SANS ROUNDED as revision and not a revival. Which to the broader sense is correct. But it also still technically could be used to function as a revival. So perhaps it could be both at the same time?
Than in addition to that I also provided a small number of glyph alternative forms that are located in both the Full Width and Private Use Area 1 Unicode blocks.
Extra alternative glyph forms are:
⮻ acefgjrstVvyz
⮻ 4× experimental lowercase letter 'g' alternate forms
⮻ small latin letter 'Eth'
I hope you like it,
Interrested in more of my Jurriaan Schrofer inspired? Please take a look a my complete collection of Fontstructions tagged with STF-LETTERS OP MAATfor the full catalog of fonts I contributed to this project so far.
Cheers
This is a cloneBLAUHAUS (Plus) - 'Bauhaus'-inspired design
This is the 'Pro' version in the BLAUHAUS family, and instead to the first version this includes a full uppercase set as well. The glyph alternatives that previously occupied the (Uc) string has been relocated to the "Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms" Unicode block.
In addition to that a whole bunch of extra glyph alernatives, numerous symbols, dingbats, arrows and other elements are included as well.
I do realize it is far from perfect, but since it was designed on a very tiny grid and without filters, a whole lot of available realestate to house bricks wasn't a luxury for this project.
Nonetheless I've tried to put in plenty of diversity, and I think the underlying constraining effect as result of the limitations from not utilizing 'brick size'-filters works out just fine in preserving a certain degree of minimalism.
5/8 weight, no filters and only 4/8 nudging within FS-editor posed another dificulty, but despite all these challenges it was a very fun project to puzzle with...
I hope y'all like it..
Cheers
This is a clone of STF_BLAUHAUSSTF_VINDALOO (Regular Condensed) - Style variation in the 'VINDALOO' font family
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Cheers
This is a clone of STF_VINDALOO (Regular)STF_METROPLEX - A discrete non-cursive gothic printscript.
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Its a 'block letter' script. aimed to resemble handwriting that was somewhat rushed and therefor slightly sloppy looking.
The inspiration for this loosely evolved around the idea of a simple handwriting style with medium tip marker pen, a writing style most commonly used and seen in simple everyday application, such as quick notes, bulletin board writing, block format business style as well as in study notes.
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The font combines a bit of two styles into one, with the capital letters done in a 70's Streamline Art-Deco style with at their core a distinct clear geometric backbone. When this is used in "all caps" it could provide for a solid looking headliner. For the lowercase I designed this playful and very dynamic script style that looks very much like a handwritten printscript.
The capital letters are designed with a minutely reduced cap-height relative to the point size. This allows the upper-case set coincide better with the dynamic variations and overshoots on the x-height in the lower-case set when type is set a mixed-case format.
Only partial kerning applied (sorry), but this was a horrible pain in the .... to get somewhat spaced decent enough!
Cheers
This is a cloneDotted sewing pattern style font, its pretty simple but I pulled some oddball kerning tricks and such to make it connect at certain letter combinations.
I will show a little of this in a sample image bellow.
Enjoy
Another recap of the lettering by great Dutch graphic designer
"Jurriaan Schrofer".
This time I tried to revisit the letters Schrofer originally designed for The "Beurs Van Berlage". A commodity market building located in the centre of Amsterdam. Later it was also digitalized and used to for the Dutch passport.
Enjoy!