Typophile

/n/ and /o/ in my first font

ahyangyi

A self-introduction: I am just someone with a little interest in fonts and typography and happened to find something called FontForge to play with.

This is my first font. Today I want to learn basics about spacing, so I typed a line of "noonnoon"s. Here comes a problem. My font begins with this strange-shaped /o/, so I don't want to change it. Does this /o/ look fit with my /n/? Is there any suggestions to make this /n/ better fit? Finally, how is the current spacing looking?

Critiques welcomed and wanted! Thank you all!

AttachmentSize
nononono2.04 KB
all characters32.68 KB
all characters, pdf60.97 KB

Welcome to Typophile, and have fun developing your first typeface.
Personally, I don't think the two go well together, but that is always hard to tell with only two letters. You will get more useful feedback when you come up with, say, ten glyphs (or letter shapes).

My recommendation, when starting a font around the idea of a single letter form, continue with similar forms first (round shapes like e, c, b, s etc.) before starting with the more remote shapes. Good luck and let uns see how it develops.

Andreas

I agree that more glyphs would be helpful to determine if these shapes can play together. As for the spacing, the /o/s look too close together, don't they?

Sorry but the "insert image" link doesn't work here. I submitted something with more characters. They were made quite some time before, though.

eliason:

So increasing the side bearing of /o/ and decreasing that of /n/ will benefit, am I right?

That's what I would try.
(for images, make sure there are no spaces or funky characters in the filename)

Yang, is this for text or display?

For text the most important thing is subtlety. It's not that
you can't have unorthodox shapes, it's that they have to
be applied with the gentlest hand.

In contrast, for a display face any unorthodoxy has to be
obvious, and it has to be applied consistently.

So for example your "egg" motif could be applied to certain
important characters if this is a text face; things like the "n"
don't absolutely need to have it. But if this is a display face
making the "n" wider at the bottom might be a good idea.

hhp

Because the other shapes are unconventional, the more conventional n looks like he's come to the wrong party with the wrong clothes. I think the n needs to be more wild and crazy, but I suspect that you'll have to take it a different direction than the o to make it work. Eg make it wider but bring the right foot in--which it was once in manuscript form. This is nicely inventive, but needs more discipline, once you figure out how to make the forms play together. You might have a look at both Fontesque and Hobo.

Note BTW that the zero in Ernestine* is egg-shaped, but I think it works.

* http://ernestinefont.com/

hhp

BTW, check out the nicely subtle egg action in this old font!
http://typophile.com/node/2253

hhp

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