When I’m not looking after three dogs or working on a site redesign for a client, I pass the time at FontStruct designing fonts. (Some people like to read books or work on home improvement projects. Me? I like to design when I’m not designing for others. I’m sure there’s a special circle of OCD for people like myself.) I am up to eleven designs at the moment but this week I have focused entirely on one design that currently stands at 156 characters. I call this design Fontima.
Lyrics by Cocteau Twins make for the best font examples, truly.
I started with another font design that I cloned so I could experiment with different widths. When I found a width with an appealing visual aesthetic, I attempted to build a serif font. However, FontStruct has a limited number of geometric shapes that can be used to construct a letterform:
A lowercase b was just made for serifs.
Adding serifs to many of the strokes proved difficult when I built lowercase k, v, w, x and y characters. So, I opted to design the font with thin & thick strokes but without serifs. I chose the name Fontima as an homage to Hermann Zapf who designed the typeface Optima in 1958. I didn’t start my design with the intention of replicating Mr Zapf’s design, nonetheless it’s easy to see the resemblance between the designs of Mr Zapf and myself.
I still have to configure better character widths, the kerning pairs being generated by FontStruct are looking less than stellar, but I rather like the overall visual aesthetic. Once I complete the remaining letterforms for this weight, I plan to build a heavier weight and possibly an oblique style—have I mentioned that with my free time I love to challenge myself?
You can view and download (free!) Fontima here. I welcome constructive comments, let me know what you think of the design and what, if any, problems you encounter when using the font.