Blues no more, welcome to the city

Finally the new font Mokum Stad is complete. I added some diacrytics, made a small kerning table and - to top it off - I wrote a new page for my website. However, that website is no longer present on the net

Typographer's blues...

Okay, the new font Mokum Stad was in the making. I only had an example for upper case, and tried do make my own lower case. That was the first version of the font. It was not quite what I thought it would be. After some talks the original idea was abandoned and a new, rounder version was made. That looked like this:



It was modelled a bit after one of the Broadway typefaces. And guess what? People I showed it to all found it "remarkably like Broadway" and "not quite as nostalgic as it could be". Blast! I couldn't but agree, so there I was. Up a certain creek without a paddle...
Time for some serious thinking, done while sawing logs for the fireplace. Destroying lumber as a means to free your mind... And yes, it worked. A new lower case was born, as a sort of small caps. Looking like this:



Well that's more like it. There are still some wrinkles to iron out, but the result looks nostalgic enough for my purposes. Have another sample here:

A new font, finally

It took me some time to produce a new font. This time I was inspired by the city of Groningen, in the north of the country. That region has a rich tradition of architecture and the like from the 1920's and 30's.
One of the city maps was done in Amsterdam School style, with a peculiar lettering. This forms the basis of my new font:



The name of the font was a challenge, because I wanted to include the word Mokum (meaning city in Hebrew). This had to be combined with another term belonging to Groningen. The inhabitants call their cjty Grunn, so Mokum Grunn was an option. In the neighbouring province of Friesland the city is called Grins, leading to Mokum Grins. This suggestion was definitely discouraged by Koos Staal, graphic designer from Haren, province Groningen.
Then a third option came into view. The people from Groningen are often called Stadjers, meaning inhabitants of Stad. Presto, the name was born: Mokum Stad, in which Mokum stands for city and Stad stands for city as well! But who cares?

Practical application of the fonts (4)

Some time ago I told you that I saw my font Mokum Tooneel on the façade of a building in Amsterdam-Noord. Today I hopped on the ferry, to take a closer look. This may seem like a tremendous journey, but the distace covered is a couple of hundred meters, which takes no more than 3 or 4 minutes.
Stepping off the ferry, I was treated to the lettering in all its glory, as you can see on the picture below:


The characters are made of wood, with several layers of paint on it. It looks very nice. Going in, I got my second surprise of the day, a chalk board next to the entrance with the specials of the day (in this case several kinds of pastry from 3 euros). Notice the artwork at the top of the board! Very nicely done. I must experiment a little with texts that are perpendicular to each other.
Anyway, it then was time for the third surprise, when the barkeeper asked me if I had seen the second logo on the back of the restaurant (the side that is visible to the people coming from Amsterdam-Noord going by ferry to the centre). I didn't, so I went to the back, and took the following picture: