andrew@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Andy Biewer) (07/22/90)
Hello, I've just recently begun digging into METAFONT over here and will soon finish my first pass through the METAFONTbook. Since I'm still a little dizzy from the first reading, I'll most definitely be brushing through it again. However, I noticed that the book, though it is complete in describing the METAFONT system, doesn't offer any practical tips on actual font creation (e.g., design, layout, methodology, etc.) Can someone out there proffer any assistance/instruction/direction in this area? I'm looking for books, articles, tips, you-name-its. Did Knuth (are you out there?) write another book strictly focused on this topic? Does TUGboat have an decent articles on it? Whatever you can think of, throw it my way. Thanks well in advance, Andy
dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (07/23/90)
In article <5235@uwm.edu>, andrew@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Andy Biewer) writes... >I've just recently begun digging into METAFONT over here and will soon >finish my first pass through the METAFONTbook. Since I'm still a little >dizzy from the first reading, I'll most definitely be brushing through it >again. However, I noticed that the book, though it is complete in >describing the METAFONT system, doesn't offer any practical tips on actual >font creation (e.g., design, layout, methodology, etc.) Can someone out >there proffer any assistance/instruction/direction in this area? I'm >looking for books, articles, tips, you-name-its. Did Knuth (are you out >there?) write another book strictly focused on this topic? Does TUGboat >have an decent articles on it? Whatever you can think of, throw it my way. So you want to design type, do you? Well, the best way to do this is to gain a really thorough understanding of how type works. Here's what I recommend: (1) Confine your early MF experiments to non-letterform experiments. Make some dingbats (random symbols), corporate logos, etc. Get familiar with the capabilities of MF as a drawing tool. (2) Buy a calligraphy set and get familiar with drawing calligraphic faces by hand. Study italic faces and old-style faces (Palatino and the Times lower case are good ones) to see how the shapes relate to what you were getting with the calligraphic pen. (3) At this point, you may want to try doing a few calligraphic letters using MF. My experience has been that MF's pens are of limited utility in this sort of work. (4) Roman letters. Get a type speciman book (a good library will have several) and examine the Roman typefaces closely. Trace alphabets with a pencil and then work at being able to draw them freehand in outline form. (traditionally-trained typographers can draw most typefaces from memory with no variations in any of the dimensions. In this way, they can tell *exactly* how much space, say, the phrase "pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs" will take if typeset in 12pt Times Italic. The utility of such a talent is reduced with modern typesetting technology, but it's a neat way to amaze your friends. (5) As a first experiment with Roman letters in MF, I would suggest drawing the Trajan capitals (a good book to use as a guide is Frederic W. Goudy's _The Trajan Capitals_, Oxford Press: New York, 1936.) If you can, you may want to spend some time carving letters to fully grasp how the letter forms came about. (6) Now for your first _real_ design experiment. You should have a sufficient grasp of how letter forms are derived to take a stab at designing a lowercase compatible with the Trajan capitals. Your results will probably be horrible, but with more practice, you can change that. Remember that traditional type designers spend years learning their craft. You will need to learn everything they know plus how to implement it in MF. It will take time, but the results will doubtless be worth it. -dh --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont Consulting and dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu production work. Free Estimates. dhosek@ymir.bitnet uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147
kibo@pawl.rpi.edu (James 'Kibo' Parry) (07/23/90)
In article <5235@uwm.edu> andrew@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Andy Biewer) writes: > However, I noticed that the book, though it is complete in >describing the METAFONT system, doesn't offer any practical tips on actual >font creation (e.g., design, layout, methodology, etc.) Can someone out >there proffer any assistance/instruction/direction in this area? I'm >looking for books, articles, tips, you-name-its. Here are a few tips I've picked up. Please remember to take these with a grain of salt, since they may reflect my personal style. (These do not deal specifically with Metafont; most of them even can be applied to fonts done the old-fashioned way, with a pen and paper...) 1.) Your first few fonts won't be as good as the later ones; you pick up much experience by actually doing several fonts. After about ten fonts, you may well look back at your first font and decide to redo it. Don't tackle anything too fancy for starters! 2.) Details and wholes are both important. TINY changes can make major differences in the way a font looks; one example is the crossbar of the "H"... if it's exactly centered, or a microscopic amount above the center, this will cause a noticable difference, although people looking at the "H" may not easily be able to tell _what_ is different. Little touches like the serifs (how big are the brackets? how much do the sloped serifs slant? how wide are they? how thick?) can make or break a font, I think. 3.) Don't make any characters in a text font too inventive. I.e. you don't want a letter standing out from the others because it has an extra loop. Consistency BETWEEN letters of your font is good, and so is consistency with classic fonts. 4.) Bear in mind the limitations/strengths of your printing method; some fonts that look good at 2500dpi look awful at300dpi, and some look better at 300dpi than at 2500dpi (though I think that's pretty rare :-)) Also try to take into account what size your font will be most used at, and whether the printouts will need to be xeroxed, printed in color, etc. 5.) Something I was told by an old pro when I first started doing fonts: each font you do will take longer than the previous one, as you become more attuned to your own sense of what a good font should look like. 6.) This may seem obvious, but some fonts are more work than others. Serif fonts take more work than sans-serif; Old-style roman more work than modern; Humanistic sans-serif more work than geometric sans-serif. (Freehand script fonts--i.e. handwriting--are for me the most difficult to do on a computer, but they're easier to do on paper with a pen than roman fonts...) 7.) Different fonts will need different spacing. Sans-serif fonts designed for printing text often need more spacing than roman text fonts (because the serifs separate the vertical strokes in adjacent letters). Very bold or narrow display fonts should have less spacing than others. 8.) Any or all of these tips, or any other rules you've heard, may be disregarded at will, because unique situations keep popping up. 9.) Study the design of "classic" (well, "popular") fonts. Some of my designs started when I leafed through a book or catalog of fonts and thought "I like these slightly-more-squarish-than-usual curves in Melior, but I'd prefer the 'a' more open at the top, and if it had serifs like Garamond..." Whether you like the fonts you examine or not, and whether the one you're working on looks like them or not, it's always good to have inspiration for the many ways of drawing serifs, 'o's, etc. (A good press-on lettering catalog--Letraset or Chartpak--is a good source, if you want to see many fonts, and inexpensive too. Or a book like Rookledge's International Typefinder.) When you look at fonts, it's often helpful to compare faces of similar styles. For instance, how does Avant Garde differ from Futura? How does Futura differ from Kabel? How does Helvetica differ from Univers? 10.) Realize that it's much easier to do a bad implementation of a good design idea than a good implementation of a bad idea. Sometimes you may have to junk an idea because you can't make it work. Often fiddling with a design will help, but sometimes it won't... 11.) Have all your characters on paper (sketched, graph-papered, etc.) before you start doing any work on the computer. (Even if you're trying to build a clone of an existing font that you have printed samples of, enlarging some letters onto graph paper can work wonders.) Hope this is useful. Remember that I'm not a know-it-all, just another person who likes making fonts, for fun&profit... Please forgive me for being long-winded. Oh, and: Try not to bring up fonts in everyday conversations with friends, I've annoyed many by spontaneously launching into a discussion of why I like bracketed serifs... :-) -- james "kibo" parry, 138 birch lane, scotia, ny 12302 <-- close to schenectady. kibo@pawl.rpi.edu _________________________________________________ kibo%pawl.rpi.edu@rpi.edu / Kibology / Anything I say is my opinion, userfe0n@rpitsmts.bitnet / is better! / and is the opposite of Xibo's.
amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (07/23/90)
Before people start deciding Don was exaggerating, I'd like to chime in agreement with him. Programming in Metafont is a skill, or perhaps a technique. Actual letterform design is an art, and with the exception of natural talent :-), the only keys to it are "study" and "practice." Read about the history of calligraphy, printing, and typeface design. Read type specimen books for fun (if you get bored before you finish, typography is probably not for you :-)). Get in the habit of identifying the typefaces and typographic treatments in any piece of printed material that you see. Draw letters. Learn to do calligraphy (this in itself will teach you more about letterforms than any book ever could). Consider taking classes at a college with a good fine arts degree program. And so on... -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com> InterCon Systems Corporation -- No one ever guaranteed that life was going to be fair.