I think this has a lot of potential and really like the feel of it.
You need to thin your diagonals down a bit. They look too dark (A, V, W especially).
Keep going with this, it's going to come out really nice!

Bendy is right about the diagonals. Also, the "A" could be substantially narrower, the "H" a bit wider. "E" and "F" are okay now, but could be narrower to get more of a Trajan feel.

It might be a side effect of the screen resolution that would disappear if I saw a PDF, but is there either a lack of overshoot on your rounds, or is it getting suppressed at too large a size?

Cheers,

T

:D
Thank you Bendy, I'll follow your words for continue this work... That I'm loving to try make a good gook.. :D and this help me to have a better view.

Thomas
Thank you so much for be so specific. Although I like this "A" width, I'll right with Bendy and you about down its diagonal weight. I'll also check that about "E" and "F" Trajan feel then I believe this include "L" too.

I'm not sure about overshoot on rounds, and I never Understood the PDF view technology... cuz many times I get so far results from original.. but well, I'll get off the fullscreen mode from this file and I'll try to upload again soon.. btw I'll need a print of this for get a better analisys.

Thank you so much mates for C&C and sorry for my messy english I'm too bad...!!!
PeGGO

I'm suggesting on the overshoot question that you *might* need more overshoot, but it may also be that hinting or the low-res display is causing me to mis-estimate that. Something like a PDF - or just a larger size sample - would help me tell if that's a real issue or just an artifact of low-res preview.

Cheers,

T

Some observations, which may or may not be worth addressing:

I agree with Thomas on the A, think it needs narrowing quite a bit.

B looks a bit dark, the top bowl could be bigger to give more counterspace and lighten the glyph?

E and F are really interesting shapes.

C, G, O, Q and S definitely need some overshoot. C and D and G look a bit light.

The vertical stem on G looks a bit tall.

The flared serifs on I and L are not the same as other characters.

There's something odd happening on the join of K and the lower leg could start a tiny bit nearer the join?

M is interesting too. You might need some overshoot at the top. The flared feet should be curved to match other letters.

That's a really nice tail on the Q.

Make the spine of S a bit heavier?

Tighten the inner counter of the U, the curve looks a little loose.

VWXYZ need curves I think.

Lowercase:

Generally, you need overshoot on the bowl characters, and some of the curves will need smoothing. The joins also.

The ear of g needs to be more sure of itself and more flowing from the bowl, perhaps with a curve somewhere.

I just noticed your tittles! I think on the exclamation mark the dot should be inverted.

t looks out of character and I think the top needs reviewing.

v looks like the point is too far left.

Are you working on the numerals?

It'll be very interesting to see how this develops. I think your strongest glyphs are EFMNQS and acfgsy. You could use them to preview other letters against, in order to harmonise the curves more.

Hope that's helpful! :)

Thomas:

Oh now I get a better undertanding about your question, when I can continue this work (cuz nowdays I'm not at home) I'll check slowly the overshoot on rounds gliphs and btw I just need learn about bitmap too for guarantee an accurate hinting when type is displayed like small size on screen.

I'm not sure if you can see the PDF file below above the sample preview there. If not, I'll try to show a larger size sample soon.

Bendy:

This absolutely useful, in fact, now I can see many more details and think better how can improve it. I'm taking note. And sorry for show an uncomplete sample, this is the reason you saw some square shapes there, I felt so happy to share my progress work, then I wasn't care about.

I'm not digital working on numerals yet, I just have done a basic drawing on my sketchbook only. but hope soon I will.

And when I have done changes ready I'll show and I'll comment my point of view about your several suggestions, that wow! this is an amazing observation! thanks you a lot Bendy! :D

An thanks so much mates for help me to improve my design so.

PeGGO

Hey, I know how you feel about being excited to share your work! I'm glad my suggestions are useful but be careful to decide which suggestions work for you and which don't.

Good luck! :)

Hi Mates..!!

I come to leave a little update:

"A" narrowed and overshoot applied.
I really like the light of the old version but I admite this is a bit near to TRAJAN pattern and I also like it.

On "B" I'm absolutely agree with Bendy suggestion.

"C" with overshoot applied.

"D" with a bit light.

"E" and "F" a little narrowed decided from a litle trajan pattern analisys... although this pattern is not followed on 100%.

I still feel all this need a better work but I'm working following many good advices from you Bendy, Thomas too and some friends and well... just check the PDF file please for watch entire changes..!!

http://typophile.com/files/LEGAN_update_05-03-2009.pdf

later more closeup comparations.

Thanks for your support, your comments and critiques and then for your time.

PeGGO

Fixed a little nearest to Trajan pattern.. like Bendy said so well there above, thanks for advices and the support, currently I'm working specially on curves on gesture of "C" and "G", the wide of "A, O, Q and E", fixed curves on serifs and other details, all prepared for kerning work ar last.
Any suggestion are welcomed.. Best regards..!!

http://typophile.com/files/LEGAN_01-08-2010_update_PRINT.pdf

I liked the general feel of it at first glance, but there are a lot of stuff that need attention here.

I would advice against breaking the connection (crossbar) in lowercase æ. A better solution would be a diagonal connection. Also, your å/Å is sloppy. The ring should not touch the letter — it should be centered above it. The ring would also benefit from a shape more like your o in terms of contrast and axis. I also don’t think the slash in Ø/ø is working: It’s to long, not centered and in need of some optical correction.

In general I think most of your diacritics and a lot of the glyphs listed under “other” need more work. I especially noticed your ogoneks. We had a thread on that topic a short while ago. Do a search for more information.

Thorn (uc) and eth (lc) should sit on the baseline with the other glyphs.
I’m uncertain about your p descender.
O and o don’t have the same contrast or axis.
C, G, c and e are leaning left.
r needs work.
The eye of g is optically lighter than the tail.
I think u might be too wide.
y does not look balanced to me.
Some of the numbers look sqoushed.
s too narrow?
Hairlines in x/X need optical adjustments.

There are optical problems all over the place: the x-height isn’t consistent, a lot of the connections between curves and stems get very heavy and what’s with the lowered Ñ? And why is the tilde so different from the lc version?

That’s my two cents. Forgive me for the lack of proper terminology — I’m not a professional type designer quite yet, so please take my advice with a grain of salt.

- You was right, I did try to conect the crossbar of ‘æ’ I done a very low diagonal angle now.
- On ‘å, Å’ I increassed the spaced between Ring and letter and like you said I take the same ‘o’ pattern. (The out of center on ‘Å’ was a mistake, now is centered yet)
- I’m not sure if ‘Ø, ø’ leave right or not, but not it’s longless and centered, I really don’t know so much about using of this symbol.
- The ogonek for me is almost a mistery yet cuz, actually I follow a topic about this before, but yes, I see that I need review for more info.
- I try to correct ‘Þ’ height and ‘ð’ position, but I’m still working about.
- Now Descenders lenght are balanced to Ascenders height (This happened cuz the ascenders size was changed for increase the x-height before but I forgot change the descenders too, anyway)
- ‘O, o’ follow the same contrast and axis now.
- Well you mention there “leaning left”, in fact, I tried to put a little bit of calligrafic touch of that kind of leaning specially on that gliphs, but again it was out of the generall system of the alphabeth.
- I was work ‘r’ using a “Root five proportion” now (a geometrical greek proportion taken from TRAJAN LETTERING patterns).

- I also tried to balance optical weights between ‘g’ eye and its tail now.
- I need a better trainnig for my eyes in ‘y’ but I test it beside to a Garamond and a Baskerville ‘y’ for get a couple of best references, still is uncertain, so, I decided to go for optical feels.

- Numbers still not reviewed.
- ‘X, x’ hairlines corrected and proportionated according geometrical greek patterns.
- In fact ‘s, S’ is narrowed cuz are following the same pattern based on the “root five” of greek geometrical proportion.
- On 'Ñ' I made a such different beside lowercase one cuz actually my native tounge is spanish, and we use this kind, is not so commom but sometimes we have a special version of that, it's just an alternative, done specially for spanish language, I don't know if other cultures or languages need a ‘Ñ’ with a traditional tilde as ‘ñ’.

Thank you so much dear mate Frode I appreciate your very useful advices, really.
Details, corrections or any just notice me please, are so welcomed!
Thank you again and Best regards!

http://typophile.com/files/Legan_1.007_0.pdf

That's starting to come together. Feels a bit like a warmer and more modern alternative to Optima. The "g" and the ampersand are among the most flavorful elements; if you swapped just those two letterforms out for more conservative designs you'd have a very different feel.

Spacing (or perhaps kerning) may need quite a bit of work yet.

Cheers,

T

I don't see the sense of the brushy slashes and dashes. The looseness doesn't seem to go with the Trajan aesthetic at all. In the fractions and maths especially, they just look silly, like mock Chinese.

I think it's really beautiful! But I agree with cerulean on the brushiness..

Thank you all guys for the support!

Thanks Thomas, in fact I'm working on OTF and metrics adjustments but and until now I'm grouping the kerning classes but still not running yet.

Cerulean, just like you said, I'm review all gliphs then I correct shapes using Geometrical proportions now and a similarity even more close, so you can see now the news on complete 1.007 version below

Thanks BigBill for the support!

http://typophile.com/files/Legan%201.007.pdf

Best Regards!
Pedro

Working now on Kerning and OTF Features

Some advice of comment please just drop it..!!
best regards!
Pedro

This is shaping up really nicely! Keep up the good work.

- Lex

Thanks Lex.. in fact this work mean a very hard work but a great school to learn about boulding and trajan design..!!

and here an image with out aliassing distort noise, a better choice to view details now.

and a little image bonus too.
Drawing process and Caligraphic studies on scene..!!

Best Regards dear typophilian mates!
=)
Pedro

I would like to know if someone of you know some about greek & cyrillic design.. well I'm trying to understand how could I increase the target use of this font.. well.. my first attempt start here with some sketches also based on geometrinal proportions

Sketches here

I specially pay attention in another families that have available this character set were almost of cases the general axis is inclined and shapes are so variable but on UC cyrillic letters are so regular, symetric perpendicular axis and sometimes with contrast inverse ex. 'R' or 'Э'... I'm still so curious abour proportions of each Upper Case Cyrillic Letters and also greek letters... well.. this will be apart of current work.. but leave on progress status.

Thanks for your comments and time,
Best Regards!
Pedro

Hi Dear Typophilian Mates!
Here my first attempt trace on Greek & Cyrillic sets
http://typophile.com/files/Legan_1.008.pdf

Coments, critiques, corrections and specially advices are always very welcomed..!!
Thanks for your time and support..!!

Best Regards!
Pedro

Impressive!

A thick base for Delta would probably be a good idea.

You probably know this already, but the problem of stress in tau could take some more thought. Taper the vertical thinner to the join?

I'm not an expert, but Cyrillic stone inscriptions in this sort of style seem to favor the form of Л that looks like Λ and Д that looks like Δ with spurs. It's more "historical". It would be good to have them as alternates at least. See Castle's Goudy Trajan for example.

Thanks Kevin! In fact I don't know much about foreing languages like cyrillic or greek like that.. but I'm searching more information like you drop there, "Goudy Trajan" is a Beautiful font (thanks by the way) and yes... I think almost the same like you but also look several references and I will need to review for improve and refine specially this kind of gliphs.

Honestly I really prefer the square Д instead Λ because I believe this square feature help to make a better diference between both languages mixing on same text probabilities or specific use needs. But yes I will leave it like alternates according user preferences.

Image here

What think about the bigram Љ that kind appear on this image?
(I see a little strange on Goudy Trajan solve)

Best Regads!

I don't know enough to comment on the Greek and Cyrillic, but I think the Latin's coming along nicely. Perhaps when little letters are nestled in the /L/s, you could put a bit more space between them horizontally?

Thanks Eliason I'll update this very soon, some it's not work woth image upload in Typophile and I also have a little trouble with OTF features that I need fex.. any way.. see you soon..!!

Best Regards!

Go for the upgrade in a new version Legan 1.010 (attached same file above on first comment) Were I correct details like ligarure, btw L+S mentioned by you Eliason, diacritis, mathematical added now & many other symbols filling several character sets for able more languages support, although I lose my OTF code but anyway the previous version it's working right.

Special comissions for add to character sets of Legan, comments, some kind or Advices are very welcomed ever.

Regards to all!

Looking good. I'm not sure there's a word in any language with "Qg," but if there is, you've got a nice ligature ready! ;-)

I'm not sold on that form of www ligature - it reads like a vw or wv to me.

Angles on the quotation marks seem surprising to me.

Also, I wonder if the crossbar of the first letter in the FE and EE ligatures should just go straight through the stem without thickening into a terminal at the intersection.

Hi Eliason!
haha, I also don't know well.. but I was do it for fun justa a guess.
The ligature "vvv" is an apostrophe figure of url www in fact when you use in its context cab understand its useful and almost nothing repair on it so much and understand that mean an alternate for url address form.
hehe.. I tried several forms for quotarion and I choice that give a very special unique look and run so well and according my testing that not violate any similarity with no one else glyph on diacritics and another kind of marks.
Well I might to try that way for FE and EE intersection feature so then I could show the result..!!

and well I leave here the new version updated at current date.
Legan 1.017.PDF
=)
Redards the best!
Pedro

BTW the "vvv" liga is just a personal way to representate to "www" (contracted way) and that is understand on its written context, but of course this is at least personal prerrefed option for write that long traditional version of web address.

I'm working now on Alternates and improving fine details.
Still not sure about the finial of horizontal stroke of currencies,
I would like to know which criteria for decide this kind of things are bette, cuz I applied two ways for

regards dear mates..!!

Preferred Alternates on progress..!!

and Specimen Update
Were's find:
- Arrows
- Block Elements
- Box Drawing
- Subscripts/Inferiors, Denominators, Numerators & Superscripts/Superiors
- Ordinals
- Tabular Lining & Tabular Oldstyle
- Fractions
- Prerrefed alternates (According Specific Language)

And several improve details

Best Regards!

Very thorough!
The small numbers for subscript/superscript/fractions appear to be simply scaled. If they are to be truly useful, you should add some weight to them.

In fact dear Kevin, they are temporary scaled cuz I'm on OFT programing code and just need the position of them, but hope soon fix the real weight for this and complete the small numbers set.

New updates features Legan 1.026.PDF:
Real small numbers for: SuperScript, SubScript, Numerators & Denominators.

And Preferred forms:

BTW I would like to be sure that Polish kreska work fine with "OTF aalt feature" cuz always persist the UNICODE paradox between simultaneous acute and kreska's use, I think the better solution is an specific unicode value for this kind of diacritic marks, but anyway, by now it's fixed through OTF alternate and supported by language code 'PLK'.

C&C are always very welcomed.

Best Regards.

Hi dear typophilians mates.

LEGAN is running all ok, but I still working on new updates and btw I wonder to know how could I solve this kind of German feature in better way for [Ë], I tried to follow the same criteria present in [Ä, Ö, Ü] in [Ï, Ë] but still not have an official solution about that.

troubles checkin out at now:
[Ï] looks like [T]
[Ë] look like regular [E] in small sizes.

In fact I saw some german brands showing Ä and Ö like that (inline), but I never saw a solution for inline Uppercase E, If somebody have information or knowledge about please drop a little bit of light.

PDF LEGAN 1.036

thank you a lot in advance
Best regards
Pedro

The Germans get away with that because they don't use ë or ï, I think.

In a modern font, this style of diaeresis will in any case be seen as a gimmick. So I think the best solution to preserve the “ancient style” feeling is simply to shorten Ï and Ë.

Eliason:
A logical reason to explain this absence. Thanks a lot!

Riccard0:
I also guess so, in fact I'm already saw that kind of solution in another works but that cause a visual break of line and look a litle weird on inline Uppercase phrase, but you have reason about I'll try your advice and then I'll try to compare them both solutions and choice.. or al least leave like OTF alternates. Thank you so much!

Definitely (as a Swede) would advice against the new umlaut form, /Ä/ and /Ö/ need to be recognisable in running text and I'm not sure they are with the tittles spaced that far apart - they just look like decorated /A/ and /O/.

Oh, and as a Hungarian I think your double acutes could be a fair bit further right, looks wonky this way. ;) In any case you'd need to harmonize the umlauts and the double acutes, as the latter is the long form of the latter - if you do end up with the broad umlauts on the /Ö/, You really need to do the same arrangement for /Ő/.

Birdseeding:
This feature is only for local German preferences... and just works like OTF alternates, so the traditional ways shoudn't work like this, if we consider what eliason said I can forget the Ë and Ï problem.. and so.. I can forget the /T/ effect resulting from the distance of dieresis and body of /I/ I take a wide value to avoid the "T" effect on smallsizes inline /Ï/ so I can fix now the distance of the rest /Ä/Ö/ nearest.
I got it better now on hungarian umlauts and doubleacutes about, I'll add this advices to my next review and lookup again my documentation.
thank you a lot.

Hi dear Typophilian mates!!

I just have a very good news for me.. haha.. the great day it's ready, Legan is on sale on http://Font.com and http://ITC too.

If you are curious just check for this out:
http://

I'm so glad and I want to say thanks for all help you give me for improve details specially on Legan font.

Thak you a lot!

As an aspiring type designer myself – and believe me I have been aspiring for a long long time – i must say this is a really handsome typeface. Are you planning italics and other weights

Congrats peggo!

Gary Lonergan:
Thank you Gary for your kind words, in fact I just started to drawing the Italics and bold weights, but is a very long and a hard work, specially for this one font.

eliason:
Thanks you so much!