Font stuff

[classicdrogn]

For the first time in at least five years, I've found a new font I like enough to set it as my browser default - two of them in fact:
Radis Sans is now my sans-serif
New Shape (while only barely technically qualifying) for serif

Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does mean I've actually switched away from my own custom designed font that's been the only thing on my screen most of the time for that long, AgameAperture or the precursor I've forgotten the name of.

So, I figured I'd share that at last, since I haven't developed it further in a good long while. You can use it as you like, though I'd prefer not having it distrubuted otherwise (in its own right or embedded in apps or whatever, though including it in PDFs or similar documents for display is fine) since there are still a few issues I'd like to fix Real Soon Now like the alignment of accent marks over the capital U, and some tiny bugaboos in the outlines that make FontForge throw error messages despite none of the regular software I've used it with ever having issues with it.

As I say, it's been the only thing on my screen for years, my tablet as well, so the basic features of being legible even at small sizes both in objective terms and relative to the display's pixels and attractive to the eye (I especially love the W, both upper and lower case) are well established, and the settings for bold and italic/oblique enough to definitely be distinctive. Also, every letter of the basic latin set is distinct even when mirrored or rotated, which I understand is an important thing for people with certain neurological conditions. Try it out and see what you think?

[Bob Schroeck]

Ack. We must have rather different visual processing, CD, because Radis Sans and New Shape are really hard on my eyes.

One of these nights, though, I'll check out your custom font when I get home.

[classicdrogn]

Mine can be vaguely described as the old Apple logotype (ca. Apple IIe) for lowercase with some Handel and Ethnocentric on caps, and the Star Trek TNG logotype de-obliqued for gaps and bevels. All the letters were drawn fresh by me, of course, but those were primary inspirations, and there are a a good size batch of dingbats and symbols copied from a couple of other Open Font License fonts way down the Unicode lists. Also a custom deck of cards in the suits of (IIRC) steam, lightning, hammers, and gears.

[robkelk]

Radis Sans looks like a nice readable Art Deco style font to me. Nifty.

New Shape Book looks a bit more Art Deco, but something about it just doesn't appeal to me. Meh.

Your font - Agame Aperature - looks nicely "futuristic", and I'm sure I can find a use for it.

[Labster]

Uh no. Maybe AgameAperture would be cool in branding, but the spacing in the lowercase 'w' alone makes it look like a 'u' with some random glyph behind it. Same with 'm' and 'n'. I can't imagine using this as an everyday font. The ascenders -- it doesn't seem to be consistent which ones are beveled, and which aren't. And capital 'U' has a reverse bevel for some reason? Capital 'I' and lowercase 'l' and number '1' look very different, good job there.

Radis Sans may actually be worse, though. It's more thematically together, but the way the 'e' is so closed it almost looks like 'θ' is doubleplusungood. Capital and lowercase 'K' appear to be the same glyph. Capital 'I' and lowercase 'l' also look identical.

Not sure what crack you're smoking that makes New Shape look serif to you. It's a better font, but the lowercase 'r' is dangerously close to looking like a smallcaps 'P'.

And since we're having a fonts thread: For any of you working on screenwriting, Courier Prime would make an excellent choice for a better looking Courier.

[classicdrogn]

New Shape has serif-like swooshes on a few letters, which is all the serif I need in my life Though not serif at all, Jacked is another really nice deco font for dropcaps or whatever, though it lacks any lowercase and would probably not be good for anything longer than, say, titles, headlines, and section headers. Ardeco is a little less ornamental and has a more complete character set, so it could do decent duty as a main body font. I still like Radis Sans better, though maybe Bob...

There is one major drawback I've noticed to Radis - the dollar sign is some kind of A-in-a-circle thing for some reason, and not even an Avengers logo or "Anarchy A" that extends past the bounds of the circle. Odd, but I can live with it - your mileage may vary.

The AgameAperture n/m and u/w things... yeah, I can see those as valid complaints. I may be set the standard kerning between characters a little low, making those not quite as distinct as they could be when not taken in isolation. The line weight could stand to be just a little lighter too, I think, which is one of the reasons I don't quite think it's ready for a 1.0 release. FontForge has a function to slim that down across the board rather than needing to redraw everything, but it still requires tweaking of bits the algorithm can't quite handle or borks in a different way and that's one of those horrible jobs that the prospect of tackling has put me off further work on the font as a whole. It is a SIL Open Font License thing, so it's not like I couldn't just throw it into the wild and hope for someone else to be interested enough to poke at it a bit, but realistically I wouldn't count on it if I'm not engaged enough to do it myself.

Courier Prime... the italic styles being more than just oblique is nice, but I don't see anything that really makes it stand out over the original overall.

edit: Oh, and while we're mentioning favorite font faces... Handel gets quite a lot of my love as well.

[Labster]

Actually one of the main advantages of the Courier Prime is that is isn't quite so slim. A lot of fonts were made based on the letterforms use in type -- the metal part. But of course on paper the ink bleeds a little, so some of these fonts are too thin. This is why paper is better than computers.

First of all, I want to say that criticism means I like you. If it's garbage I just ignore it completely. (I also ignore things because I'm lazy, so this is not a reliable indicator.) I really don't spend that much time thinking about fonts or a particular style, either -- more than anything, it's a way of encoding symbolic data, and I'd like to be able to read it fast and without errors. Which is why I obsess about I/l/1 and harder to read characters. I was going to say that "Inmate" might weird because of the "nm", but actually that "I" looks way too close. "qu" looks great. Less likely combos like "qp" and "qj" look, um, surprising. "ij" is a common letter combination in Dutch, and it would be nice if they aligned to the same height. It's okay if they look almost like a single character though, as it's kinda like "ij" -> "ÿ" -> "y". Capital IJ looks pretty cool, and kinda like リ.

Handel looks nice! Except I/l/1/! all look alike. Ill, I feel!

[classicdrogn]

I definitely get where you're coming from, and commentary is appreciated. If I had any motivation to work on it again it would be even better, of course, but at least it's here to look at on that golden day when I do. What about decimals in numbers? Some of them end up looking off to me (too close, sometimes closer than the same too digits adjacent to each other... but too far apart before being adjusted) but I know for a fact I'm biased to consider anything I've made either much better or worse than it objectively is. Still, the best kerning is unnoticeable, so if any combination of letters sticks out at all as having odd spacing it's something that should be mentioned and addressed. Eventually.

[classicdrogn]

"ij" is a common letter combination in Dutch, and it would be nice if they aligned to the same height.

I know it's been several days now, but this kept niggling at me until I checked it on the machine I hadn't switched over yet - as I thought I remembered, they DO line up to the same height. In fact, I'm pretty sure I copied and pasted the i and then stretched the bottom of it to make the j in the first place. If they're not showing up the same height on your screen, something is very strange.