(Following up from this thread in Design.)
Having read that it's a useful learning exercise for a starting designer to try digitizing a historical (metal) type, I decided to try this with Bruce Rogers's Centaur. I've never seen a digital version that looks remotely close to the beautiful text of books typeset in metal Centaur – they're all come out too fine and spindly, and look oddly sterile somehow. I'm clearly not the only one to think so.
I recently acquired a copy of "The Centaur Types", which is set in 16-point metal-type Centaur. Using that as a guide, I began trying to something that captures the spirit of the text within its pages. (I actually adapted my initial outlines from scans out of Meggs & Carter's “Typographic Specimens: The Great Typefaces”, supplemented by some unfortunately rather poor-quality images from an old 20th-century Monotype catalogue that I found on-line. I then used the Rogers text as a guide for redrawing the outlines to the desired weight.)
I had to essentially invent a number of characters since the metal type (so far as I know) never included them. I tried to be consistent with the style of metal Centaur, and that of other humanist types of similar origin.
For the time being, I've given my new Centaur revival the working name "Mythology". Compared to other digital Centaurs, Mythology is both more substantial and less mechanically crisp in form. It also has looser spacing.
http://www.altsan.org/creative/fonts/mythology/Mythology.pdf
This is my first attempt at a direct revival. I'd be interested to know what others think, not just of the results but of the methods used to reach this point. As well as more general critique, of course. :)
