Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!kibo From: kibo@pawl.rpi.edu (James 'Kibo' Parry) Newsgroups: comp.fonts Subject: Re: METAFONT: After the manual... Keywords: Whoa! Message-ID: <5%1$+S#@rpi.edu> Date: 22 Jul 90 22:06:59 GMT References: <5235@uwm.edu> Distribution: usa Organization: The Wacky World of Kibology. Only in Schenectady. Lines: 97 In article <5235@uwm.edu> andrew@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Andy Biewer) writes: > However, I noticed that the book, though it is complete in >describing the METAFONT system, doesn't offer any practical tips on actual >font creation (e.g., design, layout, methodology, etc.) Can someone out >there proffer any assistance/instruction/direction in this area? I'm >looking for books, articles, tips, you-name-its. Here are a few tips I've picked up. Please remember to take these with a grain of salt, since they may reflect my personal style. (These do not deal specifically with Metafont; most of them even can be applied to fonts done the old-fashioned way, with a pen and paper...) 1.) Your first few fonts won't be as good as the later ones; you pick up much experience by actually doing several fonts. After about ten fonts, you may well look back at your first font and decide to redo it. Don't tackle anything too fancy for starters! 2.) Details and wholes are both important. TINY changes can make major differences in the way a font looks; one example is the crossbar of the "H"... if it's exactly centered, or a microscopic amount above the center, this will cause a noticable difference, although people looking at the "H" may not easily be able to tell _what_ is different. Little touches like the serifs (how big are the brackets? how much do the sloped serifs slant? how wide are they? how thick?) can make or break a font, I think. 3.) Don't make any characters in a text font too inventive. I.e. you don't want a letter standing out from the others because it has an extra loop. Consistency BETWEEN letters of your font is good, and so is consistency with classic fonts. 4.) Bear in mind the limitations/strengths of your printing method; some fonts that look good at 2500dpi look awful at300dpi, and some look better at 300dpi than at 2500dpi (though I think that's pretty rare :-)) Also try to take into account what size your font will be most used at, and whether the printouts will need to be xeroxed, printed in color, etc. 5.) Something I was told by an old pro when I first started doing fonts: each font you do will take longer than the previous one, as you become more attuned to your own sense of what a good font should look like. 6.) This may seem obvious, but some fonts are more work than others. Serif fonts take more work than sans-serif; Old-style roman more work than modern; Humanistic sans-serif more work than geometric sans-serif. (Freehand script fonts--i.e. handwriting--are for me the most difficult to do on a computer, but they're easier to do on paper with a pen than roman fonts...) 7.) Different fonts will need different spacing. Sans-serif fonts designed for printing text often need more spacing than roman text fonts (because the serifs separate the vertical strokes in adjacent letters). Very bold or narrow display fonts should have less spacing than others. 8.) Any or all of these tips, or any other rules you've heard, may be disregarded at will, because unique situations keep popping up. 9.) Study the design of "classic" (well, "popular") fonts. Some of my designs started when I leafed through a book or catalog of fonts and thought "I like these slightly-more-squarish-than-usual curves in Melior, but I'd prefer the 'a' more open at the top, and if it had serifs like Garamond..." Whether you like the fonts you examine or not, and whether the one you're working on looks like them or not, it's always good to have inspiration for the many ways of drawing serifs, 'o's, etc. (A good press-on lettering catalog--Letraset or Chartpak--is a good source, if you want to see many fonts, and inexpensive too. Or a book like Rookledge's International Typefinder.) When you look at fonts, it's often helpful to compare faces of similar styles. For instance, how does Avant Garde differ from Futura? How does Futura differ from Kabel? How does Helvetica differ from Univers? 10.) Realize that it's much easier to do a bad implementation of a good design idea than a good implementation of a bad idea. Sometimes you may have to junk an idea because you can't make it work. Often fiddling with a design will help, but sometimes it won't... 11.) Have all your characters on paper (sketched, graph-papered, etc.) before you start doing any work on the computer. (Even if you're trying to build a clone of an existing font that you have printed samples of, enlarging some letters onto graph paper can work wonders.) Hope this is useful. Remember that I'm not a know-it-all, just another person who likes making fonts, for fun&profit... Please forgive me for being long-winded. Oh, and: Try not to bring up fonts in everyday conversations with friends, I've annoyed many by spontaneously launching into a discussion of why I like bracketed serifs... :-) -- james "kibo" parry, 138 birch lane, scotia, ny 12302 <-- close to schenectady. kibo@pawl.rpi.edu _________________________________________________ kibo%pawl.rpi.edu@rpi.edu / Kibology / Anything I say is my opinion, userfe0n@rpitsmts.bitnet / is better! / and is the opposite of Xibo's.