To my eyes the "ea" is looking a hair tight but I don't know if you can really kern that out any more due to the large gap created between the two round letters. The "i" also starts looking a hair short compared to the initial "s" (due I think to antialiasing) at the smallest size. Other than that I think it's working really well, it's evolved nicely.

>To my eyes the “ea” is looking a hair tight

To my eyes the "ea" looks just a bit too big. Also if I scan the word from the left to the right, all is good, balanced and consistent until I hit the e-a. It suddenly feels like I hit a hole in a ground, e feels sagging below the baseline, too much whitespace between e and a, the inner neg space in e looks too small compared to the neg space in other letters, especially the a ..

Having started at it for a while, I think the problem lies with the a. Try putting your finger over the a on the screen. To me the whole word starts looking far more consistent after that.

Thank you for your constructive feedback.

Ragarding to your input I reworked "e" and "a" and did some tweaks here and there to fit it in. An improvement?

Thanks again and I'm looking forward to your opinions.

in color:

I worked on it again. To make it more comfortable and maybe easier for you to spot the differences, I've attached a PDF-File, so you can zoom in and out.

Any kind of feedback is well appreciated.

I’m waiting the moment when someone will post it in the Type ID forum… ;-)

The e-a pair still looks quirky to me. It is all really nit-picking, but still.

Have you considered using differently shaped 'a' at all ? It may help with reducing the amount of whitespace between e and a.

@epsilicon: Since I'm already working on "Simplease" for many months now, I've tried it in all kinds of different typefaces -- just for fun, without having a certain idea in mind -- and figured out that "e" and "a" are a nice couple when it's a double-story "a". They are nicely linked to each other, and that's exactly my "problem". If you look at the current version the whole word feels like it's seperated into three parts (maybe that's just something I see or imagine to see). This effect is caused by the negative space between "m" and "p" and the negative space between "e" and "a". They appear like little gaps but without ruining -- seperating -- the whole word. The idea is that these gaps are kind of subliminal hints for the words "simple" and "please" because you can read "simple" and then stop, and you can start at "p" and read "please". It's the way how the two words are perfectly combined within "simplease" that makes it part of my concept to make those subtle seperations. Another part of my concept is the single-story "a" which communicates -- at least that's what it's supposed to do -- simplicity. To not make it to scientific I decided to add a Helvetica-like "s". In my personal opinion the removed dot of the "i", the single-story "a" and the subtle seperations make it more logo and less text. Btw: the "l" is almost the geometrical center which might help grasping the gestalt.

Well, that's my concept and if you think that "e-a" will never work with a single-story "a" I must make some confessions to improve the overall appearance but if you think that it might work I would like to do some more tweaking since I've already sold myself on the concept. You've called it nit-picking and I actually wanted it to work for customers and look nice to experts as well. Maybe the question is: Should form follow function? If yes, at what costs? Is the concept worth staying with a single-story "a"? Do you perceive it as typographically nice or as something that still has some mistakes?

I'm looking forward reading more thoughts on this work and want to thank you a lot for sharing your knowledge which makes this forum my favorite online-place to be.

I slightly opened the "ease"-kerning to compensate the negative space between "e" and "a". Furthermore I reworked "e" and "a" and therefore "p" to make the whole wordmark more consistent. Please take a look at the attached PDF-File to see it in more detail.

Download the PDF-File

I think that's about where I can go without having a too bold "a" caused by a smaller counter. Do you think it's an improvement?

Did some changes on "p", "e" and "a" and then sleeped on it and it still feels like it's finished. Do you have any suggestions? Does the "e-a" work better now?

Download the PDF-File

This feeling of being finished is gone again.

Basically I've changed every single letter. From almost invisible changes like on "s" and "i" to tremendous changes like on "a" and "e". The whole word is set in a tighter leading to make it easier to perceive as one. To compensate the amount of negative space caused by "ea" I made some sublte changes to "s" and "e" to get about the same amount of negative space between them like between "e" and "a". Letter "a" looks more solid now but also feels less bold like in the previous version. Letter "e" now feels more like the Futura "e" which helps reducing the gap in between itself and "a".

Download the PDF-File

I would appreciate any kind of feedback.

> This feeling of being finished is gone again.

LOL. I can so relate to that :-)

Whatever the tweaks you did to s and e, I think they are working. The wordmark now looks way more uniform than it did before. If you have absolutely nothing else to do, I would probably try it in a bit heavier weight.

Thanks a lot for you feedback, epsilicon.

To come back to an older suggestion I've tried to bring in a "double-storey a". The final and the bowl are following the restrictions of "s" while the counter was designed to balance the whitespace of "e" and "s". The stem is like in "p" and the "single-storey a".

This is only a mock-up I've uploaded to get some feedback on it, so I can more easily appraise which way to go. So, which version would you prefer?

I've included a PDF-File with both, a single-storey a-version and a double-storey a-version of my current standing.

In my opinion the current double-storey a-version looks so much better than the other one thus it beats the idea of having a single-storey a, which communicates simplicity. Nevertheless the round a looks interesting. Can you help me on picking a better one.

Double-storey a with tiny little spur:

Underneath you find the current double-storey a version. I'm not sure the tweaks are 100% there but as you can see in the illustration, there is a nice progress going through the whole word. Let's just omit the initial "s" for the beginning. The "simple" part of the word is basically straight lines that receive more round parts, the closer they get to the "please" part, which basically consistes of round shapes. Especially the passage "ple", where both words meet, works perfectly as a transformation from straight and edgy to soft and round. As you can see in the illustration "ple" looks like straight, half-round, straight, round which feels well balanced to me. To come back to the initial "s"; together with the last "e" it helps the whole word to be equally balanced at both sides.

The new 'a' helps the 'ease' to be as compact as 'simp'

The customized stems of the straight letters help balancing the round letters

Latest version in #333333

I would really appreciate any kind of feedback on the wordmark. For those who feel like single letters aren't tweaked satisfyingly, I've attatched a PDF-File for zooming in. It would be great to hear some of your opinions -- especially since I would really like to bring to an end.
:)

Thank you.

I put down the anchors for today...

Done!?!

Take a closer look

Yes, done. You could spend the next 2 years tweaking if you let yourself I think.

I like the cuts into the stems of the "m" and "p" of the previous version because they add character and a detail that makes the simplicity interesting. But I like the "a" of this most recent version with its slight spur. Can you combine the two?

Do that and I think you're done.

penn

Thank you both for your feedback. I've dropped the cuts into the stems due to some arising uncertainty but when I look at it now -- with the cuts again -- I totally second your comment on them, pennANDink. Thanks a lot.

I'm really liking this in it's final state, it's gone through a nice evolution that no one but us designers will probably appreciate. Good job.

The 'l' looks a bit narrower than the 'i', probably a rasterization artefact. More importantly the 'a' looks .. erm .. pregnant :) The rest is top notch, really well balanced.

Yeah, and I agree with penn that slanted cuts in p and m are a very nice touch. Small change that really matters.

Thank you so much for your comments, I appreciate them a lot.

The "i" and "l" are exactly the same width, but you're right, due to rasterization artefacts "i", "m" and "p" have strangely blurred left sides which let them appear wider then the "l".

Regarding the pregnant "a" ;) What a great observation, thank you for this. I was working on the double storey a for quite some time and was unsure to tell what it is that makes it look a bit strange -> turns out it was pregnant. Basically I've enlarged the counter and played around a bit with the outside rounding. I hope it works better now.

After I've stared at the word for some hours (without tweaking around), I felt like there's a little problem with the "s" looking a bit lopsided. I think it's balanced better now. I also did some subtle changes to "e's" eye.

I'd love to see an overlap of the original with the "final"

With the original you mean the first version? If so, that's the earliest version I could find on my computer. Since overlapping doesn't make too much sense because of the completly different tracking I just provide you an image with both versions sharing the same x-height. Look at the original "s", I can't believe that there was a time when I thought this looks good. I keep my fingers crossed for the final version not to look as funny as the original in six weeks from know.

To be honest, at first glance i think i prefer the first version. Its so much easier and simpler to read. The second version may be more correctly spaced and theoretically proper but I find the tracking painfully slow and the body is over-worked - its actually more of an effort to read.

I haven't read all the posts above but that's just my immediate impression on reading the post above this.

Thank you for your comment, Therese.

"Its so much easier and simpler to read."

This sounds like something I want to achieve. Especially your statement about the painfully slow tracking and the fact that the latest version is more of an effort to read, is something that is very thought-provoking.

Regarding to your feedback I've tried some different trackings. None of which is as tight as the tracking in the original version but I think that's about where I can go without having the effect of logos like Crate&Barrel.

I'm not sure what you mean with "the body is over-worked", but I hope it isn't overworked anymore with a tighter tracking.

Nice. Thats a million times better all ready! Flow is stronger and I find it so much less effort to read.

Read through the whole process, agree with Therese... your final (no.3) is the best to me. You will have to retrack for smaller applications but I like it.

Michael

Thanks a lot for your feedback. I really appreciate it.