Ye Alde Font Familie

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Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

How the heck do you get that comparison thingie? I searched in the help files, and it talks about the "Comparison Toolbar," so I went looking in the menus and couldn't find anything. So then I tried right-clicking over the toolbar buttons, and in there I see "Comparison," but it's grayed out.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

The comparison and background image toolbars are only available in the Glyph Edit window. Scroll or search to navigate to other glyphs in the same window; if you close it the background image will be lost.
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Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

Ah, okay -- thanks! :)
Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

Okay! I've fixed up the blackletter issues, and I'm happy once more -- at least, I'm happy for the next 24 hours, until I start "seeing things" again. :lol:

I also revised the accompanying PDF of the character set, along with that sample image I threw together -- and so all those files have been swapped out in my first/original post here. It's still not "perfect," but then, it's not meant to be, of course. Indeed, take a look at this sample of three pages from John Aldo's original 16th-century texts, from which I made this font (note that I slapped an "old paper" background underneath the text -- I originally threw this image together for use in another context).

Alde Fonts (Originals).jpg
Alde Fonts (Originals).jpg (535.51 KiB) Viewed 23775 times

(If you right-click on the image here and select "view image" -- or just download the attachment to this reply -- then you'll see the details of the original font much more clearly, of course.)

Think my characters, kerning, etc. are a bit out-of-whack? Well, I'm sure that Mr. Alde, if he was around now, would be very pleased with the improvements I've made on his fonts, don't ya think? ;) And one of the problems I've had with so many blackletter fonts that are currently available out there (along with other "historical" fonts) is that far too often they do look TOO "perfect" -- sure, blackletter fonts (in particular) might look "old-style" no matter how they're done, but they generally look like modern versions of "old-style" fonts, they're missing out on that "distressed" look, the wonkiness, the weird anomalies, and that's been my goal here all along in the creation of these fonts. I wanted documents made with them to actually LOOK "old," not just be merely modernized versions of "old" -- there's a huge difference between an old person (human), and one who has has a facelift and other cosmetic surgery done all over the place, after all.

There's nothing wrong with growing old, it's what's in your heart, your spirit, that counts -- I guess that's what I've been striving for, a set of fonts with heart, with spirit (evil spirits or otherwise). :twisted:

PS... In the above image, on the right-hand page shown, to the left of the name William Clowes you see some weird little symbol -- I have no idea what that was supposed to represent in Aldo's original publication, but that's where my funky dollar ($) symbol came from.
Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

Geez, I'm still not sure about that "w" -- somehow still looks too big. :(

Gonna sleep on it, maybe take another look at it when I'm more awake.

EDIT: Had a nice little nap, and I think (hope) the "w" is fixed now -- also adjusted the "v" a little, too (and while I was in there found a bunch more kerning to do). ;)
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Psymon wrote: Thu Jan 10, 2019 1:14 amI wanted documents made with them to actually LOOK "old," not just be merely modernized versions of "old" --
There again, the text on which you based your font was printed on old paper, perhaps with worn type, so there is a lot of bleed. The original lead font would not have been designed to be distressed. Apart from minor defects in casting, that might result in slight differences between copies of the same letter, one assumes that the designers took great care to make their letter forms as smooth and clear as the manufacturing process allows.

To reproduce the distressed effect with a modern black letter typeface, one should print onto paper that allows some bleed of the ink, not deliberately distress the font design.

A Specimen Sheet by William Caslon, circa 1734, long before digital printing was invented.
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Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

Good points (and interesting ones, to boot) -- that Caslon specimen sheet is pretty cool, too! And yes, I suppose you're right that many of the imperfections that ended up in my font are in part due to the ink bleeding into the paper and stuff, although at the same time these metal types were hand-tooled, too, they were hardly done with microscopic accuracy, especially in those very early (or in this case relatively early) years of printing with moveable type.

Neverytheless, overall you're right about that -- but still, it's the "look" of these old printed texts that I've been trying to emulate, how we perceive them "now" (if not back then, too). And in that regard, I didn't create a font from scratch, out of nothing, and try to make it "look old," but rather I used the original documents (or scans and photos of the pages, rather) and used those as the sources of my glyphs -- thus what one is getting digitally with my font is fairly authentic, it comes from what one actually would see in real life.

Not counting my improvements by giving it all nicer kerning, and ligatures that work on-the-fly, and other stuff, of course -- I guess in this project I've been trying to mesh the best of both worlds (old and new). Good points, though, as I said above. :)

Incidentally, after fixing up my "w" (and "v," along with some other improvements like a little more kerning here and there), and thinking that I was finally happy with how it came out, once again I'm not sure!

I think I'll just delete the "w" and "v" from my alphabet completely -- that'll solve the problem. Ha ha :roll:
Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

Speaking of old type specimens, I've always been quite intrigued with the font created by William Caxton, Britain's first printer -- it's really quite lovely, at least to me, although a bit less legible than later fonts, and it would probably be somewhat more difficult to get right (and naturally a big part of the problem would be finding examples of all the various characters, and at reasonably-high resolution). To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever created a digital version of Caxton's font, but I think it would be pretty cool -- you could make quite a nice calligraphic-style font with it, in fact, especially if you add in piles of alternates and stuff, too.

I suppose you must be familiar with Caxton's font, but if not there's a nice example of it half-way down on this page (which you can click on to view a larger version of)...

https://nickgraphic.wordpress.com/willi ... n-history/

What I find odd is all the variations between the same letter -- it definitely doesn't look like it was moveable type, but rather was hand-written instead. I haven't looked into how Caxton did his fonts, where/how all those variations came about, if he did indeed have so many different versions of the same alphabetic characters. Even if you only created one version/one glyph for each letter, though, with no variations, really, it could still make a really quite beautiful font.

Maybe some day (for me)! Who knows what the future holds, now that I'm wrapping up my first project (and, in effect, first stage of my apprenticeship at this). :)
Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

Fer cryin' out loud... all of a sudden all my various ligatures in my blackletter that contained an r-rotunda looked totally off, and so I re-did those just now, too. Also kerned a few more other things, too, that I discovered. And, of course, just reloaded that font (and the charset PDF) up here again.

This is embarrassing! So sorry, folks. I feel as though I may have jumped the gun in sharing my font, that I should have given it more time -- but it's all so very strange, really, as my blackletter is the font that I've been working on the longest, and probably put the most effort into, and I'm genuinely stunned at this late stage to be suddenly discovering so many things that need fixing up. I can't understand why I never noticed these various things before.

In any case, at least it's getting better, and not worse! I am sorry, though, for posting "too soon" -- I really thought I was finished (in essence) when I first did, though.

Sigh... :roll:
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

When I search for John Alde I found no meaningful results, but Wikipedia has an entry for John Allde who was Scottish, and so presumably not based in London. If you know more, perhaps you might like to expand the Wikipedia entry, which is a stub.
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Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

Actually, I have a whole pile of info about him, including a whole book about the printshop -- the "Long Shop in the Pultrye" -- where he ran his business, along with his predecessors and successors, and all the various publications they'd put out, plus some PDFs I came across of scanned old books with entire chapters about him. I've been planning on eventually writing up an article about him, although in many ways there's nothing very "exciting" to tell, most of the info about him is largely about his various publications.

That's backburnered for the moment, though, but indeed that's something I've already been planning -- not for Wikipedia, but for my own site, and for an ebook I've been working on of his first book, the one that inspired me toward this project (starting with the blackletter) in the first place, "The Wickednesse of Magical Sciences" (one of those old grimoires that came out during that time).

I'm way ahead o' ya! Just haven't gotten around to it yet -- first things first (the fonts). ;)
Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

I went back to attack that stupid "w" again, and then in the process found yet more things that needed fixing -- and not only that, but I discovered that I needed half a dozen or so more ligatures, to boot!

I just don't understand this, why I never noticed these things before -- at least, I didn't understand it, but I've just been thinking that I initially put all my efforts into the blackletter font alone, and it was only later on that I then did the roman and italic fonts (and then after that the smallcaps and initials), and I think what happened was that I had basically just let the blackletter slide, got absorbed in the other fonts and never really "finished up" the blackletter.

My bad, of course -- but at least I'm discovering these things now, and getting all those other weird booboos fixed up, too. This has been incredibly frustrating, though (not to mention embarrassing). :oops:
Psymon
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Psymon »

This is so frustrating, discovering all these "little things" after I thought I was done. :(

Um, another frustration that accompanies that latter frustration is that with all these little things I'm finding, each time I do, I have to re-upload the fonts to my website, and then also edit my first post here and swap out the attached font files.

I'm not sure what the rules are for this forum -- is one expected to post the actual fonts HERE, or can I just provide the link to my website instead? It would certainly simplify things for me if I can just post the link to my site instead, rather than effectively having to forever and eternally update my post here as well, each time I make a revision (in days, months, years to come).

Is that alright if I do that, just edit my original post, delete all the fonts in there, and simply provide a link to my website instead?
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Psymon wrote: Fri Jan 11, 2019 8:04 am Is that alright if I do that, just edit my original post, delete all the fonts in there, and simply provide a link to my website instead?
Sure no problem.
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Ye Alde Font Familie

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

I usually provide links to my fonts and PDF font samples.

You can save a lot of time and space by archiving TTF or OTF to 7z format first.
Alde Fonts.png
Alde Fonts.png (3.73 KiB) Viewed 23719 times
What is sometimes helpful, is to upload the FontCreator Project, then other FontCreator users can see your design notes, guidelines, OpenType tables etc., if you're looking for help or critique on more than just the end result.
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