12 februari 2009

Descending Upper Case...

An interesting idea, not to let upper case and lower case share the same baseline. Just let them hang from the same "clothesline", so to speak, and you get:



This looks promising, although there are still some quirks. For instance *is* is a good idea to let some upper case characters peek above the x-height? Or should the whole uppercase set dive even lower, like the S in the original lettering on the entrance in Zuidlaren? I have to bear in mind that people will actually use this font so the deviations from the norm cannot be too big. I'll do some puzzling over the weekend.

Update #1:
First result of the puzzling. This image is stored as a GIF-file, so there aro no JPG artifacts that could spoil the image (like the one above):



Update #2:
I did not quite like the letter Q, so I changed the design. Borrowing some elements from the R gives a much more pleasing image. Judge for yourself:



Update #3:
This follows a suggestion made by Bill, to omit the 'serif' on top of the E and F. You may also call it a flagstaff, and the initial idea was to create more height in the upper case.

09 februari 2009

Fun in the sanatorium

I have stopped working on the Esserveld font for the time being. It has to mature a little bit more. In the meantime I'll do some work on the new font Mokum Sana, derived from the lettering on the gate of the old sanatorium in Zuidlaren, Netherlands. To give you an impression:



These are the lower case characters, next in line is the upper case. Like the original wrought iron letters, they will descend below the baseline. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do that. Possibly they will rise above the x-height as well, creating room for the diacritics.
Here is the whole set. They look like upper case, but I'm using them as lower case. The upper case will look more like drop caps (like the miniatures in Medieval manuscripts).



And as always: your input is highly valued!