Going off grid

Brick in a square, brick in a square, brick in a square … Until today this was the FontStructors’ collective mantra.

Now, with the introduction of “nudging”, you can push any selected bricks off their home grid squares – up to half a square in any direction. For now, these nudges are in quarter square increments.

There are menu commands for this (Menu > Modify > Nudge) which will become active once you’ve made a selection, but most people will probably find the keyboard shortcuts easier (hold  down shift and then use the arrow keys).

I think this will open up a whole new world of exciting possibilities for the endlessly inventive FontStruct community.

Solving the Macaroni Conundrum

Even before the launch of FontStruct I was aware of the limitations of shapes such as the “macaroni” bricks on the grid. When building with them, you are limited in the ways you can connect – you can only ever “turn” in one direction. Such bricks demand some freedom from the grid. Today, with the introduction of nudging, we liberate the macaroni.

I think nudging will legitimate the addition of more new bricks with similar properties in the future.

Please Note

The feature is in “alpha” and is available in “Expert Mode” only.

Also, you cannot make composite bricks out of nudged components (or rather they won’t compose as you might hope).

Happy FontStructing!