strange - in the light weight* of gill sans, the p doesn't follow the p of the original gill design

the light b _is_ based on the regular b, however.i wonder if the inconsistancy between p's was intentional...

*which i always thought was drawn in the 1950s by monotype draftsmen

My fault. You're right.
The bold is built this same way but strangely the Extra Bold is not. It shares the terminations of the Roman.

This is however all based on available digital versions. On page 90 of Tracy's Letters of Credit it mentions the d and p as characters that were later revised during manufacturing and goes on to show (on the next page) images of terminating d's and p's.

> to my eye the d tends to float along the baseline without the termination stroke.

I'm curious, what does you eye do for this?



hhp

Interesting Hrant. It's hard to evaluate out of context though - outside of a sentence or two.

Eric, Ottomat comes to mind.

Hrant, your d works because you've tamed it.

Here's untamed and floating.

I think part of the "problem" might be that the "d" faces backwards.

hhp

my 'what the font' search only came up with banjoman (http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/banjoman/)

malvern, by P. Damian Cugley shares the characteristics you mention, being based on a gill model

http://www.typofonderie.com/Alphabets/anisettepetite.asp

If I recall correctly, my p is not the b returned or d the q, its another design.

Eric Olson wrote,

>I'm researching typefaces that
>contain lowercase d's and p's without
>main stroke terminations.

>In the case of the d it wouldn't end on
>the baseline but would continue
>into the bowl stroke and in the case of the p
>it wouldn't end on the x height but
>would again continue into the bowl stroke.


A first question, of course, is how 'blended' into the bowl stroke are you meaning?

Such an intersection can run the gamut from a hard turn to a smooth radius (with the Banjoman non-terminating example being somewhere midway in the range of possibilities).

A stencil-like break at the top d intersection - or at the baseline with p - adds more balancing complexity.

Here's a list of our Treacyfaces fonts with non-terminating main strokes on both d and p, or one of those characters:

TF Alambic (d only)
TF Avian (p only, although a close call)
TF Burko (both)
TF Foxfire (both)
TF Gary (both)
TF Roux (both)
TF Vignette (both, although a close call)


All can be seen at
http://www.treacyfaces.com/sample.html


>(...)I'm interested in this practice
>but remain skeptical because to my eye
>the d tends to float along the baseline
>without the termination stroke.


I always find that it's a design balancing act. But one that can be achieved if one proceeds very carefully.

Of course, the interaction with other characters in the design is highly important.

That's not to say that it's more crucial than in faces where there are more 'usual' stem terminations.

The interaction just needs to be watched carefully, to avoid the optical bounce. In general, if it's not a non-aligning face, and it appears to have noticable bounce, then it would probably be safe to say that it wasn't designed properly.

Even in faces like our TF Vignette, or another mentioned example, Linotype Banjoman, it's a matter of testing to see how high or low the join ought to be to look most pleasing (most innocuous, really) to the eye.

I think it can be a very useful affectation.

However, it seems to me that what the technique can contribute to the lower left corner of b is a more thorny issue.

Much more often, if it's not handled well in that very delicate spot, it's easy to permanently wound an entire typeface.

Joe

Bernhard Gothic: was this the first?

>Bernhard Gothic: was this the first?


Well, so far, it would seem so.
(Bernhard Gothic being introduced by 1930).

Influencers of Mr. Bernhard for those particular shape decisions, earlier on, might have been these:

Quentell, 1895, ATF
Dormer (later 'Pekin'), 1888, Great Western
Buddy (later 'Roycroft'), 1898, M. F. Benton
Authors Oldstyle, 1902, BB&S
Bullfinch Oldstyle, 1903, for Curtis Publishing
Hobo, 1910, ATF
The 'b', inverted, from ATF's Souvenir, 1914, M. F. Benton.
Advertiser's Gothic, 1917, BB&S
Greeting Monotone, 1927, ATF
Ultra Modern Italic (just the 'd'), Ludlow Typograph, somewhere between 1928 and 1931

...and in the case of the 'd', the lower right quadrant shaping of various uncials.

Joe

You know, I completely neglected to mention one of my favorites:

Ozwald Bruce Cooper's aparently unnamed brush letter (1930), the roman of which is shown on pp.158-159 of 'The Book of Oz Cooper', The Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago, 1949.

Done originally just for a 1930 Harper & Brothers book called 'American Alphabets', by Paul Hollister.

What's especially fascinating about this is how Cooper devised the completely different way of terminal joining.

I don't know if there was ever a name assigned to the technique (which seems to be all Cooper's).

But it's rather like a negative terminal, or a low terminal. Ending flat (effectively), but with the bowl joining very low away from the x-height.

Without sacrificing the round of the bowl (round as in Bernhard Gothic's) at all. Rather, accentuating it.

Astonishing, really.

Talk about a set of drawings that'll make your eyes roll back!

I know that A*I revived it as A*I Oz Brush about 1990. But it appears to be somewhat different from what I can tell from Font Book specimens. Perhaps it's a little haphazard? Hard to tell whether it was fully true to the brushed spontaneity of Cooper's masterpiece.

I wonder if anyone knows whether Hollister's publishing of his book introducing Cooper's letter predated the release of Bernhard Gothic?

Joe

Hans Reichel's Barmeno (and in extensio FF Sari), FF Dax
and FF Schmalhans obviously come to mind, but in those
faces that specific trait is in all the other characters too,
so does that count?

And what about Ole S