The swash elemants don't fit. Take away ALL 'swashes' and repost if you want to make some progress. Perhaps in a later stadium you can start addig them again, but I doubt you'll still want to by then. Good luck!

I like it. Bellota has a lovely overall result. But I see some improvements to do.

I don't know which elements Jasper call swashes and which may be understood as terminals. But for me the fancy terminals used in lowercase work well in most pairs (but definetively not when v or w are inside a word).

For the uppercase set, the terminals at right side produce so much spacing to the next letter (especially M). They may work as alternates or swash endings. In other hand, terminals at left would work well most of times if the letter is beginning a word. For continuous uppercase, these terminals also cause excessive spacing.

Other small points: C and G seem distorted for me. Left swash in A and K seen unnecessary. The loops in f and y are almost touching the other elements and need correction. Bottom of g is very large. J does not work, it is very small and weak besides other letters (what about try a larger, open, descending one)?

Anyway, a nice project. Keep it going.

Thnk you for your feedback. I agree I have some mixed feelings about the "swashes" especially in the uppercase and how they will work. I'm OK with the font not working in an all-caps context, but I guess more work is needed so that they at least work well next to lowercase.

On to working on this.

Hi Kemie,
I'm a fan of your work since the days of Flash 4 :)
Will love to help. Here are a few suggestions.

On the lowercase:
- I will only remove the swashes only on the "v" and "w".

- On the top part of the "u" and the "y", you can make it more like the ones on the "m,n,p,r".

- On the bottom of the "u", like the one on the "a,d,h,i,l,m,n". Or you can test how they look if you make it all like the ones at the top of the "m,n,p,r" (but inverted).

- Add a just a little bit more of white space on the sidebearing. So the letters has more room to breath.

On the Caps:
- I will remove the bottom swashes of the A, H, K, M, R, X.
- Increase the with of the swashes on the top of the B, D, P, R. They are too close to the stem.

I don't get the anti-swash sentiment.
Remove the swashes and the point of making this drops to near-zero.

First thing I would do is shorten the descenders.

hhp

Leave the swashes.

Make 2 versions and have them both for the start.

So I've done more work on this and "rationalized" the swashes:
-Uppercase letters get a swash on the entry stroke, except letters with diagonals: R, K, X
-lowercase letters get a swash on the exit stroke, except m, n, p, u, y, r, v & w that get a subtle curve on the entry stroke.

I also opened up the swashes on the caps, redeigned lowercase g and y and tweaked many other letterforms. I'm still unhappy with N and J. Disregard spacing and kerning as I've done nothing on that front yet.

Looking forward to hearing more feedback!

Sample PDF

Update on Bellota! Happy with most chartacter shapes, but wondering about /f/.. maybe it's too much?
It's going to be tough to space this one with all its little terminals sticking out.

You're right, the "f" is jarring, but I think it's
only because the loop and the bar are too close.

Also, a slightly "aggressive" shape usually causes
real trouble when doubled (this happens often with
the binocular "g") so you might want alternates.

hhp

That definitely helped, thanks hrant! Will definitely look at alternates

Looks nice!

I really like your font. I find it looks nothing like the original (in a good way)

there are just 2 chars I don't feel so comfortable with /g/ & /y/

I made a quick sketch of some alternate style, I don't know if it would fit in your general concept, here they are:

thanks emanuer! g and y are quite strong, so I'm looking at alternates with other forms, more like yours, thanks for the suggestion!

A year after comes an update: Bellota is now released, with an open source licence. Feel free to download and enjoy.