Typophile

Proportions of a monospace font

srgloureiro

Hello.
I've been requested to design a monospace font on very tight requirements. So:

It needs to be Sans-serif, except on the 1, I,i and l characters.
The height of the uppercase letters needs to be at the same level of the top of the ascender (example: T and t letters need to have the same height)
The x-height (height of the lower case letters without ascender nor descender) needs to be one half of uppercase letters (example: the letter a needs to have half the height of A; also the letter a nees to be half the height of d)

So, the question is:

What proportion do you recommend me for relation between the x-height and width (or between cap-height and width - it will be exactly twice)?
How much should I give for kerning ? Seems to me it should be said in terms of proportion relative to width, or x-height or cap-height.

Thanks in advance,
Sérgio

Nick Shinn

william. immunity.
words like these will help determine sidebearings (not kerning!)

srgloureiro

Nick Shinn,

thank you.

Can you give me more info on kerning?

Hrant H Papazian

You don't use kerning in a monospace font, because it defeats the purpose.

Proportions: an x-height of 50% of ascender is very small, especially for a design like this. So I would shoot for very wide forms; maybe start with a totally circular lowercase letter "oh" and see how much narrower you'd like to make it, working with the rest of the lc in parallel. A generous width will also help the unusually tall caps and numerals (which I presume also need to be at cap/ascender height) not to look too narrow/cramped.

BTW:
- What about the descenders?
- The "t" usually doesn't [need to] go to full ascender height; and especially in a font with a very small x-height that will look very idiosyncratic.

hhp

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