what kind of file is the attachment supposed to be?

Ahoy There! What a wonderful discovery in the treasure map. http://ian-albert.com/misc/bigimages/gutierrez/diego-gutierrez-map-whole...
The original is in the Library of Congress. Well its not exactly a treasure map but the font may be a treasure! The dots of the ? ! ; look like glittering thumbtacks too regular and distracting- why not use short strokes like you did for the j and i .
Since this is a "map font" why not include special characters for the cardinal directions North South East West, complete with arrows and florishes?

Vladimir, your link isn’t working. Here’s another one: Diego Gutierrez Map

Sorry, one thing more: "onz" means UNO so ought to be in ALLCAPS or SC...

Lovely! I enjoyed reading the critiques, and look forward to your update.

---
eeblet.com

I'll upload an up to date pdf this evening (europe).
It is far cleaner and calmer, there is kerning, redesigned numerals, etc.

Yes, there should be some "nautic" features like cardinal directions, and flourishes too. And I am still interested in this: "There were ligatured-character and other glyphs for de, del, and several other common glue words.", but I can't find information on this...

So when can I buy it? Looks really good to me. I think you've captured the spirit and flavour of the old cartographers well.

One thing that stood out for me was the fj ligature. I really dislike that near colliding dot. Other than that I'd love to see this get out there: it was one of the first things that I read about in Typophile before I joined.

Hi Seb,
Is there any chance we could please please please buy this gorgeous face? Pretty please??

Many thanks!

For those interested (like me :-)* Tierra Nueva was finally released:
http://www.fonts.info/info/tierra-nueva.htm

* http://typophile.com/node/72128

Love it, Seb

Is it available yet?..

Does anyone know what happened to this font? If not do you know of a similar font? I'm looking for something representative of 14-16th century Spain.

That italic is to die for.

I love the presentation of it.

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

I see it is now available on "My Fonts"

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/fdi/fdi-tierra-nueva/

Sebastian: believe me when I say, and I'm saying this quite seriously: this is the best typeface I have ever seen (its nature, design, execution, etc. are what lead me to this decision: I love antiquated maps, cartographic typography, and quirky letterforms) and it's design like this that makes me feel good to be a designer.

When I'm not a poor design student anymore, I plan on buying the full family.

The most common abbreviation (and seen still a good bit here in Spain) is the DE ligature. It's very simple to make, you just take the midddle bar of the E and stick it off onto the D:

That's pretty much the only ligature you see in Spanish other than the ampersand as "et" used to be used instead of Modern Spanish "y" for "and". I've read in several places that there used to be a ligature for LL or ll, but in my research I've yet to find a single document that actually used such a ligature, although there are some interesting posibilities. The "ch" is occasionally kerned closer but seeing them ligatured is not common practice.

A good font for Spanish needs a,o,e,z,d,n,r,s,c,ñ in superscript off the top of my head (see this thread on ordinal numbers which you may or may not want their combinations ligatured. Best bet for them is do several bar/underline characters that can underline one, two, three, four of them at a time. Likewise,the tilde was not just reserved for the ñ, but could be used over any vowel as well where it meant "this letter plus an m or n" (eg, cõtar = contar, ãpliaciõ = ampliación). It could be used over multiple letters to signify that several letters (usually vowels) had been omitted.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have some nice capital Qs designed for the words Que and Qué, which do appear quite frequently.

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

BRAVO!

Thanks guifa for that. That's just the type of information I need at the moment. The Basics are settled, the more specific typographic features are on the rise...

I've now uploaded a new version (see very first posting of this thread).
I'm redesigning the astrological symbols etc. at the moment.

Here's a new testing and quick-and-dirty-presentation document...

Version 0.144

Guifa, Vladimir, Eluard: your comments are not forgotten, even though most of them are not yet included in this document. I'm just consolidating this at the moment to get a new overview.

Gratuliere, Sebastian!

Very nice, but I don't like the double connections on the "sch" ligature. they seem to be overwhelming and there just because you think they must be.

Nice presentation - that is a lot of work, but well worth it. Keep at it until you hear the cry from the crow's nest "Land Ho!" I always wondered about situations with new fonts such as this one, of how to teach the new user the keystroke sequence required to produce such ligatures as the ship or cardinal point glyphs.

DWV

For a Spanish font of that era, you really need to consider including several glyphs which were much used in that era. There were ligatured-character and other glyphs for de, del, and several other common "glue words". Unfortunately, there are no ISO designations for these characters yet. The closest one for "de" is Ð (an old Norse glyph; in most typefaces the horizontal also extends leftward from the vertical, which wasn't the case for the Spanish ligature). There isn't anything even close for the other combo characters commonly used by the Spanish back then.

Cheers, Warren

You reached a fontastic new land!

Thanks Florian for the link to the marvelous map. One could zoom in and inspect the various portions of the map. The lettering on the map seems more tight and regular than Sebastian's interpretation- I could see how hard it was to create a font that encompassed both this regularity and the many idiosyncratic elements that give it its special flavor. I compared the new version of the font with a copy of the pdf I saved last week. I was sorry to see the small g lose its "cartoony" shape as Hrant has remarked with some justification. Sebastian, how about using the g found on the map in the word "Magallanes" just to the left of the Southern tip of S. America? It has dignity and a nice flourish to it. Also the new version of the font seems a bit too staid, perhaps because the text sample lacked the exciting ch and ft and other ligatures that added so much to the character of the font.

i'd like to have that too, maybe on aged paper. :)
but i guess it would be quite expensive ...

It would certainly be nice to see this released!

Yes, Sebastian. The only way to make it pay for itself would be to write and design a beautiful book based on Spanish maps and drawings. It might sell enough copies to pay for printing?

Congrats on your great result(s)!

hhp

Thanks for your suggestion. Is there a list somewhere on the web, where I can see how the glyphs looked like, and what they meant?

It would not be a big problem to include them as a opentype stylistic set.

Sebastian

BTW: I've just re-opened Tierra Nueva (Terra Nova) today, and there were such obvious flaws... Let it rest for several months was a good decision indeed.
I did some major changes that calm the forms down and make the font much more readable. More to come soon.

Holy sh** - what a lovely specimen book....I'm in a puddle.

Congratulations! truely great...

Janek

[as it is still in Critique section: I found in pdf one overlapping letter Uogonek, p.16; there are some issues in Universal Declaration of Human Rights, polish translation: "Preamble" ought to be "Preambuła" (I don't know why this error is in official translation?!), there are several hyphens inside words, and You can't leave letter "i" on the end of a line]

Okay, corrections for Uogonek Bold and the specimens are done and on their way. It may take a little time yet to be updated on the server though.

Thanks for all the flowers :)

As things are a bit asynchronous (myfonts, etc.), i wanted to wait to announce it here ...
Anyway, to make it short: it has been quite a journey, but now it's out – I'm proud, I hope I have delivered high quality work, and I am very thankful for your support from 2005 till now, as I have learned a lot from this community. I'm also full of motivation and working on the next project(s) to follow :)

You may be especially interested in the 46 pages font specimen, which is the best overview about the whole family with all its features:
english
german

Purchase is for now possible via fonts.info, and soon it will be available on myfonts.com too.

Sebastian

I am impressed!
Good luck Sebastian.

> the 46 pages font specimen

Sorry to sound 3 decades younger than I am, but: OMG!!!

hhp

It is a treasure chest of 46 pages! --Makes you long for a lovely printed version with good paper!

Great typeface, congratulations on your beautiful work.

just a short update: I am finalizing Tierra Nueva 4 weights (regular, bold, italic and script) right now. it's almost done (and i really mean almost done, it's only bug-checking and finding some not-so-beautiful overlaps in the script to do yet) and i hope to release it within first quarter 2010.

A new pdf presentation will be online soon, likely this winter holidays.

Thanks for your interest for such a long time. This was the first font i started, me and the font have come a long way since then, and it's time to get it out. :)

hello,
Is there a demo copy of this font available now for sale? I'd like to explore its use with a school project I'm working on.
thanks!

Promise, Sebastian? :) I have been procrastinating about releasing my first OT font family of 6 weights too (although two weights are already released in versions associated with a special software). I mention this because it too only needs debugging, and the first quarter of 2010 sounds like a good target date!

Wow Sebastian..!!
A really great job..!!!
I really glad for your beautiful work.. this give me hopes for keep my energies in this hard way like fontdesign..!! thanks for share your process work here..!!

my better wishes for you and for your work..!!
:D
Pedro [PeGGO]

Looking very nice. One thing on your numbers and some other glyphs: check the outline direction. Some of them are going backwards which causes some interesting white-outline artifacts on Mac OS X. I would probably given the style of the font use a · under your ª and º (including in the combination Nº) instead of nothing/underline. I think it fits the font style a little better, and is certainly well represented in Spanish typography/calligraphy.

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

Janek: thank you for your feedback. You are right in every point, I will do the corrections right away and send them to my label.

Steven: there's a student discount on fonts.info (though it's still not free ...)

Looking good, Sebastian!

ChrisL

ok, something went wrong with the attachement...

Here's an external link to the PDF: http://www.consolution.at/terranova_v027.pdf

This is pretty cool (and I don't generally like this kind of thing).

"a": The top needs a lot more character.

"g": Too cartoony. Make the ear more irregular, and offet the ends of the bottom bowl so they don't look like they're supposed to be connecting.

"k": Arms no good - try staggering them - and maybe some more flair.

"v"/"w"/"x": Too wide.

"y": That huge leftmost serif is going to give you grief.

"G": Looks dorky with such a prominent top.

"M": Too strange.

"Q": Right on!

"W": Too much.

Cedilla marks: lousy.

O-Slash: the slash could have more zing.

i-dieresis: wassup with the high diacritic?

oe: tilt the bar.

The ligs are cool. For the "fb"/"ffb" though I might leave the bar unconnected to the stem of the "b".

Numerals: I guess you've based them on the original? I would avoid them - make your own.

I think this has good potential - keep it up!

hhp

Hello Hrant,

thanks a lot for your feedback.

There is a new Version to look at here:
http://www.consolution.at/terranova_v028.pdf

>> “a”: The top needs a lot more character.
new version, not good yet i think

>> “g”: Too cartoony. Make the ear more irregular, and offet the ends of the bottom bowl so they don’t look like they’re supposed to be connecting.
new version.

>> “k”: Arms no good - try staggering them - and maybe some more flair.
complete redraw, but maybe it's too vivid/thin now.
I never liked the k...

>> “v”/”w”/”x”: Too wide.
new versions.

>> “y”: That huge leftmost serif is going to give you grief.
I shortened a bit now, but i have to compare it to the original yet.
Somehow the guy in 1561 did it with the long one...

>> “G”: Looks dorky with such a prominent top.
tried something. Not sure about it yet...

>> “M”: Too strange.
too wide?

>> “Q”: Right on!
:) not sure whether this Q ist from the italic version, but i think it fits, that's why i took it for roman too.

>> “W”: Too much.
new version. simplified.
But maybe i should do a version without the middle serifes.

>> Cedilla marks: lousy.
:) i know... complete redraw. Maybe better now, but i need to think about it.

>> O-Slash: the slash could have more zing.
i hope i got the *zing* :)

>> i-dieresis: wassup with the high diacritic?
some positioning-error. new version.

>> oe: tilt the bar.
done. new version.

>> The ligs are cool. For the “fb”/”ffb” though I might leave the bar unconnected to the stem of the “b”.
The version of fb and ffb now even has the bulge of the b beeing raised. i will undo that i think.
With "bar", do you mean the bar of the "f" that is connected to the stem of the b, or the "error" described the line above? If it's about the f-bar: what is the reason to unconnect them?
fk and ffk longsk and longslongsk is not yet updated with new experimental k.

>> Numerals: I guess you’ve based them on the original? I would avoid them - make your own.
yes, they are based on the original now (the lowercase numerals, the uppercase ones are derived by me).
What is the reason for redrawing (all of) them? I understand about the 2, 6 and 8, maybe even the 5.

Thanks for your corrections, they are a big help and motivation to go on.
sebilar

There is a new version up at
http://www.consolution.at/terranova_v44.pdf

Many changes (black is new, red is last shown version):
- redone lowercase (unified serifs, up- and downstrokes, rounds, new k, new g
- new numerals (upper- and lowercase)
- some Details in Uppercase
- new dieresis, grave, acute, tilde, cedille

On page 2, there is a very early version of an italic. It's just a redraw of the original, without any changes yet, and there are even some letters missing. So it's just to have a look at it, but not to do a lot of critique at the moment.

Questions:

- What do you think of the new h? I'm not sure about that form at all
- Upstroke of d, k und l are not connected to the stem in the original font, but they are in b and h. Should it be unified?

known bugs:
- Y is completely twisted...
- no updates on ligatures and combined numerals (fractions etc.) unless the main glyphs are quite fixed
- & turns too much to the left

Thanks for your comments
Sebilar