There was a text on type design, Pretty sure I read it in PDF format, though not sure if it came from a book, or from a website, or a presentation or what.. And in this text was a picture of all the shapes you need to construct the basic latin alphabet, upper and lower case. Can't remember every shape that was there, but it wasn't more than a dozen or so. I remember it had the bowl shape, a straight line shape, tittle shapes, etc... The idea was, these are the only shapes you need. Of course this would result in a very homogenized font with no difference in shape between the b, d, p, and q, for example, but nevertheless, the shapes presented were the lowest common denominator for constructing a complete set of latin glyphs.
Anybody familiar with what I'm talking about? I have no idea where I saw this now and would like to read through it again and become more familiar with these "pieces"
