Typophile

Mosman. New font, work in progress, could use some help/advices

couzinhub

Hello everyone, I'm posting a sample of a font I've been working on for the last few month now. I'm aiming to do a modern sans-serif with a bit more friendliness than the usual spurless fonts. My goal is to design a text version and a condensed version with light/regular/bold/black, with italics, so 16 fonts in total.

Even though this is still a bit early stage, I'd be quite interested to know what you think about the general design of the font. I live in Perth, Australia, and there's not many font designers around as far as I know, so thanks to Typophile, I should be able to finally get some constructive feedbacks :)

I started this font design by looking at fonts like DAX or AKKO. I tried to keep the shapes very simple and not too rounded to stay modern, but at the same time, not too square to keep the friendliness in. It is quite a low contrast for a text font, but I think that the open shapes and a largish width should be balancing this.

In the attached sample (it's the bold by the way), some glyphs are grey because I only added them to give a general idea of what I want to do, but I'm not happy enough to consider them as part of the family yet. I really struggle with few letter, mostly lowercase like the y, a, g, or x. The capitals are a more recent work and I think doesn't have as much character as I want it to have yet, except for some letters like the A, R and P that I'm quite happy with for now.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

couzinhub

I recently did some extended test prints, and I think my bold is not bold enough. also, I might have make it a tiny bit too big because testing at 12pt was looking bigger than most fonts. So I'm back to the drawing board to increase the weight of each glyph and I surely will edit the shape of some because I think I might have missed some nice opportunities with letters like v, w, x, y and z.
I'll also work on a new spacing, I feel like it needs to be a bit increased in general.

I'll make sure to upload some of the updates. Any thought anyone?

couzinhub

Here is a more recent preview of the latest update. All caracters have been redrawn to a bolder weight, and I spent some time getting the caps more inline with the lowercases. still a lot to do, but I like the latest edits.

http://www.couzinhub.com/files/mosman-sept-2011.pdf

LexLuengas

I'm liking it! A few coments: The angle of the top of the stem of r, n, m makes it look abraded. The tail of l is too long for my liking. Both S and s look rotated counterclockwise. Straighten a bit the lower part of the stem of a. The diagonal upper stroke of k ends in an uncommon angle. Why hasn't the z any angled strokes?

JamesT

The angled idea is nice but it should be more consistent. The /F/d/p/q/and/j/ would benefit from the angled terminals.

cdavidson

Wow, I really like this. Sort of looks like a cross between Aller and Officina.

Not too sure I'm a fan of the tops of the M and N. Perhaps try a flat corner? Also the g looks to be leaning to the right because of the shape of the tail. I'm not sure this would look good, but I think a tighter curve might help.

couzinhub

Thanks everyone for commenting and for the kind words. In general, I agree with the idea that I have some problem with these angled stems and terminals. I still have to find a solid system to get the consistency right. What bothers me the most is that I tend to use the angled top a little bit too systematically, and I'm testing to see if I like having some flat tops or different solutions to keep these angles. You can also see some example of my recent tests on this thread (sorry, it's in french but you'll get the idea with the images) : http://www.typographe.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=13783#p13783

Nothing has proven to be completely successful so far, but I will post the results when I feel that I have found a good solution.

I'd like to start experimenting with some weights soon, and maybe that'll bring some answers.

couzinhub

A quick update of the recent changes. Most (if not all) glyphs have been edited, and even if the general look shouln't be much different, I find the whole much more homogene and consistent.

(Click on the image for a PDF preview)

Morpheus10

I think there is a spacing problem for o (my opinion) but beware i am a beginner.

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