Thomas Phinney is the Vice President of FontLab (one of the most well known type design software available), and also used to design fonts for Adobe. He had answered questions for my dissertation, so I decided to email him for a critique on my characters.
I feel extremely lucky that he could respond and help me out.
Hi Thomas,
Once again, thank you for filling in my questions, the response you gave has helped hugely with my essay. I have been working on the practical side of the project, and would be honoured to receive some feedback form you on it.
I have attached a (very quickly put together) specimen of Clothworker, the typeface I have been working on with a few type designers internationally.
Clothworker is a caps-only, display typeface. It originates from an old Victorian inscription, brought to life for digital use, and made available for most Latin users. The eccentricities of Victorian typography have also been shown through the addition of alternate ‘quirky’ characters. There are also some street sign characters added, demonstrating a typical, traditional English use.
Let me know what you think, and if you require the font file itself I can send that across too. I am in the process of completing the X,Z and an ampersand.
All the best!
Joe
His response:
Hi Joe!
Nice stuff! It's really come together well. This feels like a real, functioning typeface.
A few thoughts that might help you polish things a bit more:
- straight-to-round transition in the D seems a bit sudden
- The 6 and 9 feel out of place. They could probably use a ball terminal like the 5 and 2. Also, the top of the 6 and bottom of the 9 are a bit heavy at the extrema.
- given the other number designs (5, 6 and 9), the 8 might work better if the loops crossed at a more oblique angle (less like an X), and perhaps if the lower loop was just slightly bigger and the top loop just slightly smaller.
- ring accent is strangely wide
- the alternate A and B that have the fully-looped swash are not working so well. Especially the B. I know it's relatively monoline, but many of the swashes seem more monoline than the rest of the font. Look at the thick/thin contrast in the cap O, and apply that to your swashes, and see if it helps.
- the serifs are as heavy as they can possibly be without being silly. I'm wondering if it would look better if they were just 10 units thinner. (Assuming you're on a 1000-unit em square.)
