Friday, November 12, 2021

Five more alternating-letter font families

 I have found typefaces with alternating letter sets to be an almost empty niche in the typeface world and have been trying to fill it. From September into November  I worked on five more typefaces that use the OpenType feature of Contextual Alternatives (calt) to automatically alternate letter sets. Unlike many of my past efforts in which the sides of letters snuggle together, these five have vertical sides and the two sets of characters differ from each other on their tops and bottoms.

Bihext is based on a bisected hexagon. It comes in two styles, a filled and an outlined style.  It is available from myfonts and fontspring

The letters of Bannetters are formed on parallelograms, one set sloping downward to the right and the other sloping upward to the right. The result of alternating them is a zigzaggy string of words. Bannetters has two styles, one with squared edges and the other that rounds the outside of letters that are usually curved. It is available from fontspring.


A third typeface is Zigzaggy. It has letters on diamond-shaped parallelograms that are formed by trisecting a regular hexagon. It comes in four styles: black letters on blank shapes, blank letters on black shapes, and two that alternate these two possibilities. It is available from fontspring.

A fourth family is the wavy font family Undulate. One set of letters bulges upward and the other sets bulges downward. The result is wavy text or text that resembles a washboard road. It has two styles, a solid and an outlined style. It is available from myfonts and fontspring.

Finally, Undulated is also wavy but the peaks and valleys of the waves are at the right and left sides of the letters rather than in the middle as in Undulate. It seems to have a more chaotic appearance than Undulate, perhaps because its letters lack the symmetry that some of the letters in Undulate have. It is available from fontspring.