Glyph design: V-derived letters ( X W Y A )

s
o
z
i
v

S
I
V

O
Z
H J
U
X W A Y

G Q
C
E F L T
M

D P
K
N

B
R

Just as three letters can be made from the ‘O’, two from the ‘I’, and four from the ‘H’ and ‘Z’, three letters—‘W’, ‘Y’, and ‘A’—can be made from the ‘V’. The capital ‘X’ will also be included since it has many things in common with the ‘V’.

The ‘X’ is constructed just like the ‘V’—take a lowercase ‘x’ and extend its arms and diagonals to the capital line and the baseline. The strokes should intersect at the height of the ‘H’s median. The letterform is very slightly narrower than a proportionally scaled lowercase ‘x’ though. When we embolden the ‘X’, the extra weight on the diagonal goes on the inside, reducing its slope slightly. On the arms, it goes on the outside, increasing the skew between the two arms slightly (else the arms look misaligned).

The ‘W’ is constructed just like its lowercase counterpart—Start with two ‘V’s, overlap them, reduce (or even remove) the middle serif, and compress the letterform slightly.

Glyph design: box capital letters ( E L F T )

s
o
z
i
v

S
I
V

O
Z
H J
U
X W A Y

G Q
C
E F L T
M

D P
K
N

B
R

The box group of capital letters—‘E’, ‘L’, ‘F’, and ‘T’—all have a vertical stem derived from the capital ‘I’ and horizontal arms derived from the ‘Z’. Some—‘E’ and ‘F’—are also divided by a median aligned with the crossbar on the ‘H’. Three of the letters—‘L’, ‘F’, and ‘T’ are degenerate versions of the fourth—the ‘E’. So designing the ‘E’ means we get the other three relatively easily. However ‘E’ is very complex to design, so it helps to draw the ‘L’ first and make the ‘E’ from that.

The ‘L’ takes its stem from the ‘I’, and its arm from the ‘Z’. Experiment with different letter widths to find the best proportions. The joint between the two strokes also benefits from some bracketing on the inside.

Glyph design: I-derived letters ( H J )

s
o
z
i
v

S
I
V

O
Z
H J
U
X W A Y

G Q
C
E F L T
M

D P
K
N

B
R

The ‘I’ gives direct rise to two letters—the ‘H’ and the ‘J’. Both these letters are incredibly straightforward to design.

The ‘H’ is just two capital ‘I’s connected by a crossbar the width of one of the arms on the ‘Z’. The letter, not including serifs, should be about as wide as the ‘Z’ as well, and the crossbar should be located slightly above the letter’s median. As usual, the interior serifs on the letter’s two stems should be shortened slightly.

Glyph design: O-derived letters ( C G Q )

s
o
z
i
v

S
I
V

O
Z
H J
U
X W A Y

G Q
C
E F L T
M

D P
K
N

B
R

From the ‘O’ comes the ‘C’, ‘G’, and ‘Q’. The capital ‘C’ and ‘O’ differ from their lowercase counterparts in that their bowls are virtually identical, while the ‘c’ and ‘o’ have marked differences in curvature and stress. The ‘C’ is produced by taking half an ‘O’ and extending the ends to meet up with beak serifs from the ‘Z’. The bowl is extended to meet those serifs, which depresses the upper and lower left corners of the letter slightly (marked with pink arrows).

It is very common to leave the ‘C’ like that, with two serifs on both ends of its bowl. A minority of typefaces (such as Le Monde Journal) however remove the bottom serif, tapering out the bowl into a finial.

Glyph design: drawing the first capital letters ( I O V Z )

s
o
z
i
v

S
I
V

O
Z
H J
U
X W A Y

G Q
C
E F L T
M

D P
K
N

B
R

So we’re finally up to the capital letters! Luckily, capital letters are much easier to design than their lowercase counterparts. You can get functioning glyphs for a third of the uppercase alphabet with just a day’s work. This is because uppercase letters are much more square and geometric than their lowercase counterparts. There are fewer curves to worry about and the curves that do exist are much easier to handle. Many uppercase letters also look very similar and recycle parts (at least optically), so a few parent letters can give rise to very large swaths of the alphabet.

The most fundamental unit of the capital letters is the vertical stem. That means that the first letter you should design should be the ‘I’.

It makes sense to design capital letters where they would most commonly be used—at the beginning of a word, so that’s typically my approach to designing capitals.

The ‘I’ can be constructed by taking a lowercase ‘i’ and duplicating its bilateral serif. The ‘I’, unlike the ‘i’, is perfectly symmetrical, so make sure the right side of the serif isn’t still shorter than the left side.

Strategies for setting letter spacing: part two

In the last post, we resolved the sidebearings of three letters—‘n’, ‘o’, and ‘v’, each representative of a class of letter shapes. These sidebearings can now be assigned to related characters with congruent sides. The sidebearings of the ‘n’ also work for the ‘m’ and the ‘i’ (but not necessarily letters like ‘l’ which has a taller stem and no head serif on the mean line). Since the left side of the ‘n’ is the same as the left side of the ‘r’, the left sidebearing of the ‘r’ can be taken from the corresponding sidebearing on the ‘n’. The same goes for the right side of the ‘h’, which matches the right side of the ‘n’. In Floribunda the right side of the ‘a’ also matches the ‘n’, but this is not always true.

The sidebearings on the ‘o’ can inform the ‘e’ and ‘c’ (the right sidebearings might need tweaking) and the bowls of the ‘b’, ‘p’, ‘q’, and ‘d’. The ‘v’s sidebearings set the sidebearings of the ‘w’ and the ‘y’.

Strategies for setting letter spacing: part one

At this point, all twenty-six lowercase letters have been drawn and packaged into a font file, but they lack any horizontal metrics, so they all print in their own em squares if you try to type with it.

Text credit: Wikipedia: Sun

We have to set the sidebearings (basically the width) of each letter to get the text to print more like this (again, capital letters and punctuation have been stripped since Floribunda doesn’t contain them yet) :