Here are two stencil fonts that I am currently working on: (1) Zuboni Stencil, based on a Russian design by an unknown designer, and (2) Plantain Stencil, based on my Plantain which in turn is based on Plantin Adweight, which was one of my first commissioned projects (by Smarter Image, long before they went bankrupt). If I weren't having so much fun this week with starting this blog, I probably would have finished kerning these and released them by now. Ok, I'll get to it tomorrow! And yes, the first one (Zuboni) includes Latin letters, but Plantain Stencil does not include Cyrillic ... yet. For those who are curious: Plantin is a modern revival typeface, cut under the direction of F. H. Pierpont in 1913, who based the design on that of a famous 16th century printer, Christopher Plantin, for whom Pierpont's font was named.
Technical notes: One of the interesting dilemmas of doing a revival — as with both of these fonts — is how true to stay to the original, and what, if any, changes to make in the design. I always work on the assumption that the original designer knew what he was doing. But, I inevitably end up making some changes for one reason or another. (Yes, I'm one of those people who cannot follow a recipe without tweaking it a bit.) For example, while creating Latin glyphs for Zuboni, I became more aware than ever before of how many more diagonals there are in the Latin uppercase than in Cyrillic, mostly thanks to the last five letters our alphabet (VWXYZ), all of which are mostly diagonals, and none of which (except X) are part of the Cyrillic alphabet. All of a sudden, the glyph elements that had worked so well for Cyrillic started to look really awful when applied to some of the Latin letters. So, I had to experiment quite a bit, and in order to make everything work together, I had to change some of the other glyphs. For example, the 'M' in the final version is different than the one shown here. I don't make that sort of change without some deliberation, but some things work and others don't. What works for a Cyrillic alphabet may not work at all for Latin, and vice versa. So, it can be challenging to come up with solutions that work for both. Then, if you add Greek ... well, that's another essay.
Another thing that fascinated me was adding the cuts to Plantain to create a stencil version. Not quite as straightforward as it might seem. But, what was a pleasant surprise was how much "sparkle" the cuts added to the design. I guess it's a similar effect to that of adding an inline to a font; but, I wasn't expecting it. (Unlike a lot of type designers, I rarely have a clearly defined agenda when I start on a design — for better or worse — so I often have surprises in the process.) Anyway, I guess it makes sense, because there is more light (white) bouncing off the paper (or monitor) where the cut has been made in the letter.
Ok, if these sort of musings are REALLY boring to you, this is probably not going to be your favorite blog. But, if you find it interesting, perhaps you will want to subscribe. In either case, please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, whatever. You don't need to register to leave comments here.
UPDATE: The fonts shown above are now available directly from CastleType: Plantain Stencil, Zuboni Stencil.
