mbusher … look under the subject of ‘lettering’ and you might have better luck.

HERE IS A SCAN from Lettering Art in Modern Use by Raymond A. Ballinger. (1952)

You can see the mechanical pencil outlines on the tissue paper. Underneath, is
the revision with optical corrections.

Doyald Young’s two books (Logotypes & Letterforms, Fonts & Logos) are pretty strongly oriented towards lettering-based font construction, and Leslie Cabarga’s Logo, Font & Lettering Bible has a lot of good stuff. As for the rest, yeah, use Google to search Typophile and look for threads on lettering. The Cabarga and Young books have the advantage of being in print, but when it comes to lettering, they only touch the top of the iceberg.

i’ll try that monday when i’m back at college. i was looking in the typography / type design section, which is probably why i couldn’t find anything. according to the catalogue they have a copy of the book you suggested so i’ll pick it up.
Thanks for the suggestions.

I’ll just add that there is little in type design that *actually* uses a compass. Even stuff that looks geometric usually isn’t, and normal lettering is much more organic than constructed.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t consistency - but it’s of a different sort.

Regards,

T

I’ll just add that there is little in type design that *actually* uses a compass. Even stuff that looks geometric usually isn’t, and normal lettering is much more organic than constructed.

Not to mention that no existing font format (that I’m aware of, at least) supports rational curves, so even if the type was designed with a compass, it won’t be perfectly circular.