Font Forum

I have this morning uploaded the Great Bear Roman font to the web.

The font is incomplete; yet as I have not done anything to it for a long time I thought that I would upload it to the web as it is. It is version 0.13 of 9 November 2006.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/GRTBEARR.TTF

An earlier version of the font was used in the following publication.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/r ... nglass.PDF

It was the third in a collection of three pdfs.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/reusablebags.PDF

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/m ... lebags.PDF

William Overington

21 January 2008

Yesterday I produced an experimental version of the font as Great Bear Roman Expt version 0.13 in GRTBEARE.TTF, as a copy of Great Bear Roman version 0.13 with the change of using autometrics with left of 145 and right of 34. This is not a perfect solution yet I wish to try the two fonts in comparison. The 145 was chosen so that the lowercase o would have the same space to the left in both fonts and the 34 was chosen during experiments so that the h would have a width of 1024 font units.

I have just uploaded the GRTBEARE.TTF file to the web.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/GRTBEARE.TTF

I am wondering how is the best way to decide on the spacing between the characters in a serifed Roman font. Does anyone have any advice to offer please?

William Overington

22 January 2008

Although not specific for serif Roman fonts, I think this Spacing method might help.

I've read this book has some great letter spacing techniques explained:
Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design by Walter Tracy

Although no longer in print you could try to buy a used copy of:
Fontographer: Type by Design by Stephen Moye

I found some text at Kern King, which I use in the Font Test window. That tends to show up some letters that are not well-spaced.

We're waiting for Erwin to develop a wizard to adjust bearings automatically. Something like optical kerning. Now that would save a lot of time. I always finish my font with all the composites, and then decide that the spacing is not quite right.

Thank you both for your help.

William

For what it's worth, William, this font has a lot of promise. It reminds me vaguely of the old serif font included with Borland Turbo Pascal, but has a unique flavour. Keep working at it and be sure to extend the character set!

Thank you for your review.

William

Great Bear Roman in use.
William Overington

3 May 2014

There is an image about three-quarters of the way down the following web page where I used the capital A of the Great Bear Roman font.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/outitems.htm

William Overington

Monday 20 February 2017