New families: Sansduski & SansduskiMono

As part of creating the unusual striped lettering featured in BigStripesMono, I designed a bold sans-serif set of upper-case letters.  A few weeks ago I decided to expand that set of letters by adding lower-case letters and more weights. The result was SansduskiMono. Its high x-height and tight spacing make it better suited for display and decorative uses than for blocks of text. Having put the effort into expanding the original typeface, it was a logical step to modify it a bit more by creating a proportional family from it, which is called Sansduski. Both families have twenty members, with an outline style that complements the black style and obliques styles for all the weights and the outline style. Both are appropriate for titles, posters, advertising, and other uses that benefit from simple letter forms that are geometric and clean. 

Both are available from myfonts (here and here) and fontspring (here and here).

TapeUp/TapedUp additions

TapedUp was a novelty font I designed in 2005 as a single-font family. I had used a template to produce several novelty/letterbat font with items such as hand tools and decided to use the template using a simple rectangular shape. The name was chosen because that shape could be a strip of tape.

In late 2021 and early 2022 I decided to add some family members. I created a bolder version and a shadow version, and then added oblique styles to yield a family of six. The shadow version can be used with the regular version to create two-colored lettering. Trying to update the family on myfonts encountered a problem as the file in their font platform seemed to be hopelessly corrupted and the solution was to resubmit it with a slightly different name.

TapedUp is available at FontSpring and TapeUp is available at Myfonts.

Two more alternating-characters fonts

In February and March I added teo more alternating-character fonts, fonts that are designed to alternate two sets of characters. Weaving could be considered a condensed version of Woven, though it does not have the tessellation properties of Woven. It comes in three styles, a thin, regular, and outline. The outline style was designed to fit over the regular style in a layer. Weaver is available from fontspring and myfonts.

FangsALot is a family of nine faces. The template shape on which all are based is a distorted triangle that resembles a curved tooth or a fang. The shape has four orientations from flipping and two are used for regular style and two for an italics style. Midway between these styles is an isosceles triangle and it is used for a third style. I did not think the fang motif came through clearly in these three fonts so decided to fill the fang shape with simple sans-serif characters and then reverse colors to allow layers. FangsALot is available from fontspring and myfonts.

Four more for 2022

Typefaces with alternating characters have a tiny niche market. Because no one else has filled it, I decided I would. So far in 2022 I have released five typeface families into this niche, including the four below.

LoveDuets is similar to YinYangMessages and ButterflyWings in that it fills a single image with two letters. One set of characters fills the left side of a heart and the other set fills the right side. The OpenType feature of Contextual Alternatives does this automatically in applications that support it. There are several typefaces that put letters on hearts, but they all put one letter on one heart. The LoveDuets family has two styles that can be used in layers. It is available from fontspring and myfonts.

I started IMPuzzled a couple years ago but shelved it as I worked on other typefaces. This year I finally finished this family that puts letters on interlocking puzzle pieces. I have found one other font with letters on puzzle pieces, but its pieces are all identical. IMPuzzled has two styles and is available from Fontspring.

Woven was the first typeface I designed intentionally using a shape that tessellates as a framework in which to form letters. Like Woven, Billowed uses the framework of a simple tessellation pattern to form letters. Both Woven and Billowed can create lettering with a wave or ripple both horizontally and vertically. Woven has two styles and Billowed four. I have not seen any other typeface that resembles these faces. Billowed is available here and Woven here.

For the complete catalog of my alternating letter fonts, see here.

SlipperyFishes

In later 2021 I used alternating letters to give a line of text a wave. (See Undulate.) I realized that instead of having the waves on the top and bottom parallel to each other, I could have them reflect each other. This design idea gave birth to SlipperyFishes. The strange name came about because the look of a line of text reminded me of a slippery fish.

SlipperyFishes is monospaced with tight letter spacing to accentuate the ripple pattern. The family has four members: regular, outlined, condensed, and condensed outlined. The outline styles that can be used in a layer with their base styles to add color. 

Slipperyfishes is available from myfonts and fontspring.

A completely unrelated note: Myfonts listed their top 25 new fonts from 2021. The list includes 18 sans serif faces, 6 seriffed faces, and 1 script face.

BigStripesMono, a different kind of striped text

The latest stop on my exploration of ways to use the OpenType feature Contextual Alternatives is a typeface family named BigStripesMono. As the name suggests, it is a monospaced family that can create striped text, with a stripe different from other striped text. The stripe is not apparent in a single character but only becomes visible when members of the family are properly layered. Two of the four family members, the regular and outline styles, look ordinary. The other two contain half letters and these create the striped effect when properly layered over the regular or outline styles. The sample in the illustration shows the stripe. 

This use of contextual alternatives is completely different from my past uses. I began with letters forced into a two complementary template shapes: PoultrySign, Caltic, Lentzers, Snuggles, CloseTogether, ZoidicFun (Trapezoidal), Lopsickles, and Hexonu. I also did ordinary letters on complementary objects: Vinetters, BrightIdeas, Eggad, Coffinated, Ribbonetters, YinYangMessages, and Zigzaggy. Similar were letters on objects with mirror symmetry: ButterflyWings and OpenBook. Finally I did some typefaces that alternated top and bottom shapes: Bihext, Undulate, Undulated, Bannetters. This is, as far as I know, the biggest collection of these kinds of fonts anywhere.

BigStripesMono is available from fontspring and myfonts.

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.