Whoa, not all @ once!

Honestly mate, you should learn to make decent calligraphic lettterts first. With a real pen.

-----------------------
Chopper Reid says "Harden the fuck up".

I actually started with scanned penwork. (edit: that looked calligraphic.) However, I found the original idea, while it looked nice an inch tall, scaled just horribly. The bottoms fade away as the size shrinks, making a drifting baseline. But I dont care for the flares as a compensation for that.

Forget a "real" pen - distill this to what it needs to be typographically.

hhp

What size do you intend as the "design size"? If you intend it to be used big, then the flares are less an issue. I can't see this looking good too small, though.

The flares hold it together at medium small sizes, but I think they look weak, detracting from the overall feel.

mate, the lfairs aren't the problem, its kinda like you have forgotten to put on your trousers and ask "hows my hair?"

-----------------------
Chopper Reid says "Harden the fuck up".

Muzzer I get what you are saying, but if I've got trouser problems and hair problems... Yeah, I suppose, pants first.

Here's a much more rigid treatment, more type-ish, less hand-ish.

Is there such a thing as an undershoot?

Forget a “real” pen - distill this to what it needs to be typographically.

Sorry, don't know how I missed that post earlier. These are both attempts to move past the pen. There is a gem in here, I know it.

Now there are identity issues. Is that last word toe or foe? (Yes, I know it is toe, but it could be confusing.)

I also wouldn't undershoot too much, else the overshooting characters like o and e look too low. (But I do like the way the o and the e look!)

As I work on it, that issue comes and goes. Once the primary form is settled, I will re-tune the mid-ascender swash, again.

Do the stronger stems read better? Neither of these sets of curves portrays the wispiness of the original sketches.

Specifically, I was looking at undershooting the o and e, now they appear to drop below the line tho' they are flush with the stems' points. I will probably resolve that when developing the a and u.

Yes, I think the stronger stems read better. As for the overshoot, now that the stems have an apex, they need to overshoot just like a v would. So, I wouldn't undershoot the o and e.

Out of curiosity, what's your g look like?

The metrics are not worked yet. Shorter descenders seem more pleasant. You can see the slightest change at the top improves the feel of the t. The g is currently still in the old style. It will not look like the s, in context or isolated. The s's descender is still being tweaked.

Definitely not done: the connection of the g's tail. The k's tail. the arm of the e. the slant of the a. spacing.

Looking at this more carefully, I think some of the letters are very nice,
like the "s" and "k", but many of them, like the "a" are trying too hard
to be something they can't.

hhp

Thank you. It might sound a little too neurotic, but I've fought long and hard to make this 's' work. The 'k' is actually feeling like "trying too hard" to me. The hardest part is the 'p' and 'z' and other letters where I don't know what is too contrived or not anymore. This face is a battlefield...

The 'z' is fine, and the 'g' is very nice. The one glyph that really just doesn't work for me is the 'y'. I suspect it would look better with a round bottom. (Pause for jokes...)

Didn't Pat Benatar do a song, "Type is a Battlefield"?

Does anyone know of any songs that mention MAKER'S MARK in the lyrics?

"!Whiskey Songs" is the name of the font, not a thread to discuss songs about whiskey :^)

- Lex