Comfortaa improvements

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi Johan, 

I have started working on your typeface Comfortaa. The first thing I did was refinements of the basic lowercase a-z. I have reviewed spacing and made it more generous.

Tweaked the outlines staying as close as possible to the original shapes. Optical compensation were added were appropriate to improve the text pattern. 

Let me know how you feel about these new changes, and tell me if you want something different. 

The working directory is here on github. You can download the latest TTFs from here. 

Left: new v.3.000; Right: legacy v.2.004

These were the first glyphs I worked on:

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Here is a full comparison of my work so far. 

The sample was generated using fontdiff

[Alexei Vanyashin]

I have been working on Cyrillic improvements,

Top: after. Bottom: before

Top: after. Bottom: before

Left: after. Right: before

Top: after. Bottom: before

[Alexei Vanyashin]

My bad. wrong description. 

Top (Gray) is before

Bottom is after

 

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Today I worked on existing Latin glyphs. 
All these characters are now revised, and made compatible.

[Alexei Vanyashin]

[Johan Aakerlund]

Hi Alexei,

Overall I like a lot of the changes you have made so far. I do have a couple of comments:

• The increased spacing is nice and suits the font well
• Decreasing the height of the "t" seems reasonable, but perhaps it's a bit too much
• I feel you may have slightly overdone the optical compensation some places:
• Some letters are too super-elliptical now in my opinion - given that the font needs to work for headlines as well - letters like "a", "b", and "o" don't look round
• The line variation in the "n", "h", "u", and especially the "m" seems slightly excessive to me 
  
• Although the new "s" is prettier, it now seems a little out of style from the rest of the characters. I did a modification where I rounded it off slightly (especially at the bottom), and I think it fits the style better:

• The bottom of the new "g" looks too non-geometric - like someone took an "o" and drew on the bottom with a marker (okay I'm exaggerating, but I'm sure you get the point)
• Now that you have raised the horizontal line of the "f" I think the curve disturbs the balance of the letter, and should perhaps be reduced or brought back. Something like: 

• After raising the dot in "i" and "j", the "fi", "fj" combinations look weird to me - but I think issue is solved by changing the "f" as above and keeping the new dot height.

I hope I'm not coming off as too criticizing - you are of course very welcome to disagree with me and we can take it from there.

It's also a matter of me not wanting to loose too much of the fonts "quirky character" that makes it unique.

But let me hear what you think of my comments!

[Dave Crossland]

Thanks for this feedback Johan!! :)

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi Johan 

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful feedback. Your suggestions are very reasonable.

Keeping the original character of the typeface is important. In this update I have reverted back in the direction of the original source. 

Could you post your suggested /s glyph in OTF format for me to use a reference. 

Having read your comments I understand the original rationale of lowered bars in f, and t. Since the ascenders are short it does make sense to keep them lowered to compensate for the small length. 

As for /t I made the ascender taller, but not as tall as h-ascender. An equal ascender in /t and /h would be appropriate for a simple modular font, but for a more sophisticated design such as yours a design mistake. 

List of changes I made:

— lowered bars in /f /t

— higher ascenders in /t

— reworked proportion in /f /t

— minimised "inktrap" compensation in m n h u, and /a

— rounds: less super-elliptical in oabdpq

The fonts are available here for closer inspection. 

Let me know what you think about these changes. 

-a

Todo in next update:

— revise ligatures fi fl 

— revise /g

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Another remark: lack of any optical compensation can be part of a fonts character. In the recent updated I still kept some compensations, but to a lesser degree to avoid clogging. 

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Today I have worked in the GF Latin Plus range. 

I have added extra glyphs for GF Latin support (minus Vietnamese).

Attaching a comparison with today's update. Gray background is the yesterday's version. White is todays. 

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Today I worked on figures, symbols and marks in the existing GF Latin Plus range. 

Tomorrow: spacing and kerning, revise /g and /s

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi Johan.

Today is my final day on Comfortaa. Next week I am switching to other tasks. However if you see a bug, or have more comments, let me know, I will fix it. 

Here is what I have done.

I fixed /g and /s

— Added Vietnamese support. This completes GF Latin Plus support. 

— Reworked figures and fractions

Top: Before. Bottom: after

— Made sure all existing glyphs are compatible, including Greek.

Made special narrow accents for i-based glyphs

Added core Kerning for Latin and Cyrillic

[Dave Crossland]

Great success!

Nhung, please review the Vietnamese (if you didn't already :)

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Cheers
Dave

[Johan Aakerlund]

You have done an excellent job I must say. I have been busy, and completely forgotten to check up on your progress, so I apologize for the (very) late reply! But looking through your posts, I really like how the font has turned out :-)

Best Regards,
Johan

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Johan, thank you very much!

That is great to hear. It was great to collaborate with you, and thank you for your detailed and thoughtful input during the process. 

Alexei 

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