Using fontforge12/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Scale the result X 100% Y 5% and rotate 15° counter-clockwise. ![]() Embolden by 50 units, squishing counters (as above).This gives monstrous letters, 20 times their original height on a rotated axis. This is all done relative to the glyph origin. Rotate each glyph 15° clockwise and then scale X 100% Y 2000%. ![]() Rough bold created by stretching, bolding and de-stretching. Escalate, embolden, de-escalateįor my next experiment I started from the 60pt optical version of Coelacanth, reasoning that if I could get it right here, where small mistakes would be so obvious, I might be able to automatically apply the same changes to smaller optical sizes, using some interpolation trickery. So leaving the lower-case g aside for the time being, I tried a different method. In many other glyphs the pen keeps a fairly constant angle except at the serifs (books on calligraphy show how serifs are constructed, for those who are interested). The g glyph is a special case, because the nib angle changes so much between the top and bottom of the glyph. What we really want is a way to simulate a wider nib: i.e., to broaden the strokes along the pen’s nib angle, but not in the other direction. The changing angle of an imaginary pen nib, creating thick and thin strokes. An ideal bold would simulate a wider nib. The thick and thin parts of the strokes result from the angle of the pen nib, as you can see. Classical serif typefaces are designed to emulate the strokes of a broad-nib pen or brush. To get a really decent bold we need to think a bit about how the letter is formed. If you look at other well-designed bolds you’ll see that the thin strokes and serifs remain fairly thin, not like this. The characters have a sausagey feel, lacking grace. So… the strokes in this auto-generated bold don’t have as much contrast between thick and thin as I’d like. You can also enable View > Number Points > SVG, which removes all doubt but clutters the screen. The easiest way to correct this is through judiciously cutting and re-pasting contours in one glyph until you find the right order. If you try to interpolate now you’ll get something like this: This is what interpolation gives if your contours aren’t in the same order in the original glyphs. Ctrl-1 will make a selected node the first node of that contour, but your troubles are not over: although the interface gives no clue of this, the contours are now in a different order. Also note that the first node of each contour is now in a different place that will cause problems for interpolation. Most of these will disappear fairly cleanly if you select them and hit Ctrl-M (for merge), but you may have to do some manual repositioning in a few cases. To use this you’d need to clean up all the new nodes that have appeared. (Note: I’m not changing the advance widths so far.) We don’t want to go so extreme that that’s necessary. By getting it to “squish”, you’re telling it not to deform the shape in order to give the counters room. We start with this… …and get this.Ī few clicks: Element > Styles > Change Weight I set it to embolden by 50 units and “squish” counters set it to “LCG” (Latin, Cyrillic and Greek mode). It may be the naïve approach, a mindless algorithm that expert typographers would spurn… but I’d be stupid not to at least try it. Hey, you want to design fonts? It comes with the territory. One of these is easy, but the others take considerable time and care. Instead, I have tried several semi-automated approaches, to get close to what I want. Perhaps I might eventually end up with something that looked halfway OK, but would it still have the distinctive look of the Coelacanth family? Unlikely. How does one make a bold?Ĭreating a good bold by manually dragging nodes is beyond me. So start as extreme as you can without losing the basic shapes of the glyphs. There are limits, and if you start too extreme you’ll be tempted to deform the letter-shapes substantially, so your counters don’t disappear… but those deformations aren’t a good basis for interpolation. Starting with extremes is generally a good idea, because if you can get it looking fairly good at an extreme weight it should look excellent by the time you’ve interpolated it back towards your carefully-designed regular. The bold can then be produced by interpolation, along with semi-bold, etc. So rather than start by working on a “bold”, I’m beginning with a “heavy” which is much more exaggerated. To produce the complete Coelacanth family I’m relying heavily on interpolation. I’d like Coelacanth to be versatile and meet all the common typesetting needs so it must have bold. Bruce Rogers didn’t create a bold for Centaur (on which Coelacanth is based), but we now live in an age of philistines, and bold type is ubiquitous. The Coelacanth typeface I’m creating is classic Venetian style, harking back to an age before bold type was invented.
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