Gallery | FontStruct

197 2940731 Published: 20th June, 2023
Last edited: 9th October, 2023
Created: 18th June, 2023

ZEPHTON (Pro) — 70's future retro / sci-fi style typeface
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[ INTRODUCTION ]
A revival of the Sci-Fi lettering used by the “Atlantic Toy Company” for their “Galaxy Serie”. A science fiction themed toy line that was manifactured from 1978 to the early 1980s.

The lettering seen on their packeging uses a modified and filled version of a typeface called Paperclip Contour, which was designed by Dutch graphic designer Ad Werner, and was issued by Mecanorma in 1973. There is very little information provided on the web in regard to the original typeface by Werner. And even fewer images. Nothing that show a complete character set, only FontInUse submissions. But taken from the research I conducted I can safely conclude that the original Paperclip Contour typeface has just one style, which is outlined, and that it includes a lower case(a-z) letterset with numerals and just a had full of symbols and punctuation.

That being said, this actually is the second revision I did for the lettering. The innitial first version had a super basic character set, as well as a couple of mistakes included alongside some compromises in respect to certain glyphs. This was due to the limited knowledge I had in regard to the use of the FS-editor at that time. So the font wasn't 100% accurate. This newer version correct most of the inconsistencies that were present in the older version.

Due to the incomplete resource material on the original Paperclip Contour by Werner I can't check accuracy of this newer version. But I think that apart from the thicker weight in Zephton its 99% accurate.

Where the older version ran short by a lot, this new revision in fact can qualify as a full font, with everything from numerals, symbols, puntuation marks as well as accented letters for more Latin languages. And ever some glyph alternatives. Making this much more of a functional font.

[ THE FONTSTRUCTION ]
The font is a “Unicase” style typeface that has only “Minuscules” included. There are glyph alternate forms for several letters as well as a secondary set of numeral figures. These characters are located in the Unicode blocks for “Halfwidth And Fullwidth Forms” and “Private Use Area 1”

There is also a full (a-z, 0-9) alphanumeric set with “Contour Outlined” glyph alternative forms, which is located in the “Private Use Area 2”

The font saw a major update that tied everything together, and sort of finalizes the font for proper use.

Several characters have received minor adjustments in order to find a balanced harmonic distribution of typeset material. Also several improvements have been made to the overall shape and form of various characters. In addition to that numerous new characters been designed, expanding the character set even further.
Work also continued in the metric department, building the kerning table, that contains 2368 stored kerning pairs so far. Spacing was reduced by 50% to tighten the letter fit significantly. To round things up and convert it into a more functional typeface some of the characters were rearranged and/or relocated to different Unicode blocks.
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[ CONTOUR OUTLINED GLYPH ALTERNATIVE FORMS ]
The contour outline glyph alternative forms are not 100% accurate conversions of their solid counterparts. This due to minor design difficulties that simply made it impossible to fully execute it at its current size and with this thin stroke weight. The deformities are simply the result of a lack in fully smoothened stroke contours in some of the transitions from diagonal to curved parts. These flaws are minute, and mostly only noticable at large size rendering, but nonetheless present. In small to medium size text these imperfections are hardly visible, and pose no real problem. Anyway.. the contour outlined glyphs are still very close approximations nonetheless, just so that it happens to be with a small number of tiny imperfections.

As a direct result of this the two sets with glyphs do not fully match and therefor not seemlessly overlap.

This can be ignored for most part in the majority of the font's application, but it does create two important limitations:

1) Contour outlined glyphs are unsuitable for vector path outline rendering when the stroke alignment is set to "Outside" (Configured like that with threshold for the corner point angle set to sharp these imperfections in the glyph contours can generate spikey disruptions to appear in the stroke rendering).
— So this configuration should be avoided.

2) The two styles are unsuitable (or incompatible) with stacked “multi-layer" overlay text compositions.
— Simply due to the fact the two variations aren't a 100% true match.

They do on the other hand, combine perfectly side-by-side in text composition.
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[ MORE LIKE THIS ]

There is also this other FontStruction that was inspired by Ad Werner's font Paperclip Contour, called Neue Werner Paperclip, this one was crafted by fellow memberfunk_king

Thats it for now...

Cheers