Typophile

Looking for an elegant condensed Monospace typeface

Viviane Tubiana

Hello typophiles,
I'm working on a project that calls for a monospace typeface - but here's the catch - it needs to be condensed and somewhat elegant as well...
I did the original design with Letter Gothic but I'm looking for something else, with possibly more weight.

Do you know of a great condensed monospace typeface that I may have overlooked?

I'd love to know about it!

Thanks in advance,

Viviane

Elegant monospace -- bit of an oxymoron.
The only condensed one I can think of is Base.

Nick,
It is quite the oxymoron!
Thanks for suggesting Base - I had it on my list of fonts to try out for this and it just might work.
(Now let's see if the client likes it...)

All monospaced fonts are condensed? Don't type designers make the "M" and "W" as narrow as possible, and that sets the width of the font?

I have seen tricks done with the middle stroke of an M and W to make narrow even narrower.

I think one of the failures of Adobe's Muliple Master technology was related to the M and W.

If we inspect Merganthaler/Linotype's metal type designs of days gone by, we will find the designs of M and W very much differed dependinfg upon the point size of the design. At wider at smaller point sizes, and narrower at larger point sizers.

This is because to promote readability, a wider M or W is required at smaller point sizes, but at larger point sizes the increased white space is unnecessary and too dominant.

Similarly, good monotype designs to appear at smaller point sizes should be wider, than designs to appear at larger point sizes, which should be narrower.

On a related topic, I heard from a professional type designer who did very interesting creative work for Microsoft's Typography Group. The designer explained that at very small points sizes, widths could be manipulated for on-screen only (@ lower resolution) representation, where certain characters could appearer wider than during printing at a much higher resolution.

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