A farewell to calt?

Coffinated features letters on coffins. It may be my farewell, at least for a while, to the use of the OpenType calt feature to alternate letter sets.

Coffinated is monospaced and macabre. Its two styles can be used in layers for added color. (See picture above.) It is not a happy face with many uses but it might be appropriate for Halloween or the Day of The Dead.

Unlike Vinetters, Eggad, and BrightIdeas, three other fonts with alternating character sets on objects, the letters used in Coffinated were not taken from a earlier typeface but specifically designed for this font family.

Coffinated is available on FontSpring.

More fun with calt: Snuggels

For the past couple of months I have been playing with typefaces that use alternating letter sets, in part because I found a way to have an OpenType feature alternate the letters automatically. My latest typeface family of alternating letter sets, which I named Snuggels, emphasizes the tightness with which these alternating letters sets fit together.

The first font of the four began as a set of hexagons and a set of hourglass shapes that fit between two hexagons. Keeping the original outlines as much as possible, I carved out parts of these shapes to make letters. Each set of letters is by itself awkward and not very attractive. They only come to life and are interesting when they are mixed together, with letters from each set between letters from the other set.

It is always fun to see what other family members can be spun from one font. A thinner or lighter version was quite easy to create, though I do not like it nearly as much as the original. Then I realized that I could also do a version using only lower-case-letter shapes. This version does not have ascenders or descenders and that is a bit startling.

This is a typeface that screams "Notice me" to the reader. It is definitely not useful for body text.

Snuggels is available at myfonts.

New Font: BrightIdeas

A few years ago I did a maze in a maze book that used lightbulbs for cells. This lightbulb pattern seemed appropriate for another typeface in which there are two sets of characters that alternate. I derived the letters on the bulbs from an early sans-serif typeface of mine, Myhota-Bold. A sample of the result, called BrightIdeas, is shown below. BrightIdeas has two family members, one that has outlined bulbs and one with solid bulbs. They can be used in layers for added color.

BrightIdeas is available at fontspring.com.

New font family: Vinetters

Vinetters has letters on the alternating leaves of a vine. It is monospaced and uses the OpenType contextual alternatives (calt) feature to alternate leaves as the vine snakes its way across the page, putting leaves with the base down between leaves with the base up. The family has two styles, one with transparent leaves and the other with solid leaves, and these two styles can be used in layers to add color. The characters on the leaves are derived from the typeface IngrianaCasual.

Vinetters is another in a series of font families that is using contextual alternatives to alternate between two sets of letters. The two sets are complementary and neither by itself has much appeal.

Vinetters is available from FontSpring and myfonts.

Also now on FontSpring is FattyPants, a reworking of the odd font Onyon.

28 more

The Zimric family simulates neat hand printing. It is a large family, with 28 members. It has condensed, narrow, and regular widths and each width has four or five weights. Each width/weight has both an upright and an italic style.

A number of my type designs have come from playing with previous designs, either making them more extreme or trying to make them more legible. The lettering I designed for Coffinated invited development. It was sans serif and quite simple. A first spinoff is the monoline Zimric family, which I considered naming Decoffinated.

It is available on fontspring.com and myfonts.