Feedback for Lora Devanagari

[Alexei Vanyashin]

My current progress on Lora Devanagari. The Bold weight is still a bit less covered than the Regular. 

क ख ग घ ङ च छ ज झ ञ ट ठ ड ढ ण त थ द ध न प फ भ म व ष स ह

ऄ अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ॠ ऌ ॡ ऎ ए ऐ ऒ ओ औ ॳ ॴ ॶ ॷ ा ि   ी ॉ ॊ ो ौ ऻ

I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks in advance.

Alexei.

[Dave Crossland]

The low contrast of this is typically matched with a sans, while Lora is a serif face. Perhaps you ought to pair it with a Cyreal sans?

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[Alexei Vanyashin]

I can't say this is low contrast. The contrast amount is closely tied to Lora. 

Maybe you're talking about this glyphs list, it's set in Arial Devanagari.

Sorry if this was misleading. 

Forgot to provide the github link:

https://github.com/cyrealtype/Lora/tree/master/devanagari

[Alexei Vanyashin]

I just watched the devanagari calligraphy video and had a look at Dan Reynold's Martel,

and realised my contrast distribution should be adjusted. 

[Dave Crossland]

Oops :) sorry, was reading from my phone, sometimes it renders images inline instead of attachments and I thought that's what I was seeing ;p

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[WeiH]

I was going to say the contrast seems to match Lora latin, and by now it seems common (and ok?) to use stress angles that don't directly correlate with a calligraphic pen no? 

[Dave Crossland]

On 4 July 2014 21:11, Alexei Vanyashin <a...@cyreal.org> wrote:

I just watched the devanagari calligraphy video and had a look at Dan Reynold's Martel,

and realised my contrast distribution should be adjusted. 

I agree. What you posted is 'latinized' and while this is found in vernacular usage I'd prefer to avoid it :)

[Pria Ravichandran]

Hello Alexi.,

I am seeing issues with the width of certain characters especially the Gha., also having counter forms in some places (like I and II) can give you some serious trouble while expanding the family. The Ja has a ball terminal., and that seems to look odd., unless you are sure of the texture and consistency I am skeptical about it. If you need further comments do feel free to ask.

Cheers

Pria

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[Alexei Vanyashin]

Thanks everyone.

I realised my mistakes, and am reworking the contrast in the font based on the calligraphic model now.

Thank you for your feedback, Pria,

On Monday, July 7, 2014 3:23:42 PM UTC+4, Pria Ravichandran wrote:

Hello Alexi.,

I am seeing issues with the width of certain characters especially the Gha.,

The widths and proportions seem a bit tricky. I used Noto Sans Devanagari as a reference for proportions — would

you say it is a good idea? (http://www.google.com/fonts/earlyaccess)

[SOL]

Hello Alexei,

this PDF can be useful to analyze the structure and modulation in Deva letters.

http://www.typoday.in/2012/spk_papers/yashodeep-gholap-typographyday2012.pdf

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi Sol, thank you. 

This is very useful.

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi, 

(sorry my last post had the wrong PDF attached, I deleted it.)

Here is my new PDF and OTF. I have redesigned the key glyphs according 

to the calligraphic model. Is this closer now?

Looking forwards to your comments, 

Thanks, 

Alexei

[Pria Ravichandran]

Hi Alexi.,

The texture is looking good. Spacing I think are still to work on. Here are some comments on individual characters:

Ga is seeming to be pulling to the left.

Tha seems very wide?

Ssa seems to be breaking on the PDF on the horizontal strokes

Also the Ra and Sha strokes are flying off compared to the verticals, I am not sure if that is good or bad., its rather an observation.

Cheers

Pria

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[WeiH]

Alex, the OTF and PDF font's don't match, I think you may have a wrong .otf up?

[Alexei Vanyashin]

On Thursday, July 10, 2014 12:58:48 PM UTC+4, WeiH wrote:

Alex, the OTF and PDF font's don't match, I think you may have a wrong .otf up?

Yes, Apologies. Here is the correct OTF. Note there are still glyphs from the old version in the OTF.

[WeiH]

Also, apologies for the mistake in typing your name Alexei!

[Erin McLaughlin]

Hi Alexei! Thought I'd write some comments about your work. Is there a matching Latin we should be looking at too? Or no?

Here are some of my thoughts:

-- Many of the characters still seem to have weight in the wrong places. I think you should look at this guide, and with a broad-nib pen, try to draw them yourself, so you can really get a good feel for the modulation.  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/googlefontdirectory-discuss/XRYMYHZpUVc -- or -- if you decide that this typeface should be more mono linear, go through and make the weight alterations more consistent.  

-- I agree with Pria: the way you drew the Ga looks like it's flying off to the left. Make that vertical stroke thick the whole way down to prevent this.

-- You should probably make the knots of Ra, Na, Ma, Ga, Da all a bit more similar, at least in darkness. Some are small and round, some are thick and wedge-shaped. Creates a spotty texture.

-- Middle line of Sa should connect to the left-side.

-- I like how the Kha looks, but I don't think the proportions/curves of the left portion look as good when they are seen as Ra and Sa. For these two, you might want to move the knot up a bit, and make the bottom curved part longer, so that it touches/goes slightly past the baseline.

-- Ya and Tha should probably look more similar, and, should be clearly distinct from Pa. I think that the bottom curve of Tha does this better. Maybe you can use it on the Ya, making it more "pointy"?

That's all for now! I think that taking a closer look at the weight and re-drawing those knots will help a lot!

Thanks for posting!!!

-E

[Pria Ravichandran]

Hi Alexei

Some comments on the light?

1. The terminal on the Ja is really really hurting me. Have you considered what happens with the conjunct NgNya

2. The Bha's counterform looks too condensed in comparison to the Ma.

3. Nga and variants using similar forms seem to have a higher contrast.

4. Forms similar to VocR seem very dark.

5. Va, Ba look condensed in comparison to Na.

6. The above based matra signs look darker, maybe a PDF issues or a design issue?

7. On an overall there are contrast issues that need to be addressed.

Hope it helps.

Cheers

Pria

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Dear Pria and Erin, 

Thank you for your input. Your feedback has been very valuable to me. 

I have revised the glyphs you mentioned and reworked the contrast of other glyphs. 

The Bold weight is put aside until the Regular will be in good shape. 

Attached is a PDF and OTF of the Regular weight. 

Judging from the samples, do you think that devanagari looks darker in comparison 

with the Latin?

Looking forward to hearing from you, 

Alexei

[Erin McLaughlin]

Hi Alexei!

I have looked at your .pdf and .otf and have some more comments for you. Thanks so much for sharing!

The stroke emphasis looks much more traditional now, congrats! Although, I looked at the first .pdf you had posted, and in retrospect, I think that design had a lot more in common with your Latin, and the contrast/weight seems to have been a better match! I feel regretful - perhaps if I had seen the Latin with your first proof, I would have advised you to make the changes less dramatic? I actually think that it is a stronger design at this point!

I agree with your concern about it looking dark. I think this is because it has much lower contrast. I would suggest that you scale your Devanagari down, and widen the spacing a bit. (I did a quick test of this, screenshot attached). And then, to increase the contrast.

OR…

You might actually want to go back into your first version of the font and alter the weight distribution of those drawings instead. I think that many of your narrow letter proportions seemed to match your Latin better. I think that you had really good instincts here. The letters seem to relate to one another a bit better, I think. 

I made a quick drawing of a Va that is more similar in proportion to your very first design, but with a more traditional weight stress. I wonder if something like this, which is a combination of both of your directions, might be possible?

I wonder how you feel! Do you like the new direction better, or do you prefer your first design?

I'll just post this first before getting into specifics of your current design!

-Erin

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi

Erin, thank you very much for your previous comments.

Here's Lora Devanagari, 4th delivery, Regular.

I reduced the weight, to my eye, this one matches the Latin now. 

The devanagi is 10% smaller in x-height, and metrics are wider.

I would like to hear more feedback, 

Thanks in advance,

Alexei 

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi all

Here's my weekly update of Lora Devanagari. 

Includes Bold weight.

Thanks

Alexei

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi

Here is my weekly update of Lora Devanagari.

What I did this week:

— Completed full devanagari encoding(based on Lohit) for Regular

— Added more glyphs to bold

— Various refinements 

Goal for next week — complete full encoding for Bold. 

[WeiH]

I don't know much, and maybe it's too late by now, but the Devanagari on pg 5 of Lora-devanagari-29082014.pdf seems still bit darker than the Latin? Though I see this is common across many Devanagari fonts with Latin counterparts...

[Alexei Vanyashin]

WeiH, thank you for pointing that out. I am considering your feedback. I may leave this as a font feature, or try to reduce the weight of strokes to match the Latin. 

Here is my weekly update of Lora Devanagari Regular:

—Added more conjuncts, based on the encoding of Vesper. 

—Added Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit texts in the test PDFs (thanks Dan for sharing)

—Various refinements

Source files and PDFs are on github:

https://github.com/cyrealtype/Lora/tree/master/devanagari

[Dave Crossland]

BTW Alexei you might like http://www.kevinsweet.com/best-free-serif-font-on-google-fonts/ :)

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Cheers
Dave

[WeiH]

If you're designing a lighter weight and will be interpolating with it, you might be able to just interpolate a lighter weight in the Devanagari when you have both 2 masters? A bit of extra work, but less than manually adjusting it to be lighter I'd think.

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi,

Here is my weekly update of Lora Devanagari Bold, 

I added more conjuncts to the Bold, and made various refinements to the Regular. 

I have a problem with matching the weight with Latin: the Devanagari Bold is

lighter that the Latin counterpart. Any quick suggestions?

Github link: https://github.com/cyrealtype/Lora/tree/master/devanagari

On Monday, September 8, 2014 10:16:23 AM UTC+2, WeiH wrote:

If you're designing a lighter weight and will be interpolating with it, you might be able to just interpolate a lighter weight in the Devanagari when you have both 2 masters? A bit of extra work, but less than manually adjusting it to be lighter I'd think.

Thanks for the suggestions. It might be a solution to make the masters compatible and adjust weights

in both Light and Bold, since my Bold doesn't align well with the Latin's thickness.

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi

I've made a poster for Pathum for promotion, 

and added my indesign template file to git:

https://github.com/cyrealtype/Lora/tree/master/devanagari/Test%20PDFs

[Pathum Egodawatta]

Hi,

Thanks!!

Cheers

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[Alexei Vanyashin]

I have made a significant design change in Lora:

— the x-height in Latin is lowered and contrast readjusted to better match the height and contrast of devanagari. (Thanks for Fiona's meticulous input on ATypI)

— I introduced subtle design features to bring the scripts closer together after a review session with Dave. (Thanks!) 

All this is visible in the PDF. 

Sources on github:

https://github.com/cyrealtype/Lora/tree/master/devanagari

I welcome any comments.

Alexei 

On Friday, July 4, 2014 7:49:42 PM UTC+2, Alexei Vanyashin wrote:

My current progress on Lora Devanagari. The Bold weight is still a bit less covered than the Regular. 

क ख ग घ ङ च छ ज झ ञ ट ठ ड ढ ण त थ द ध न प फ भ म व ष स ह

ऄ अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ॠ ऌ ॡ ऎ ए ऐ ऒ ओ औ ॳ ॴ ॶ ॷ ा ि   ी ॉ ॊ ो ौ ऻ

I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks in advance.

Alexei.

[Alexei Vanyashin]

I am happy to announce the first release of Lora Devanagari.

https://github.com/cyrealtype/Lora/tree/master/devanagari

[vaishnavi Murthy]

Dear Alexei,

I spent some time going through your typeface and feel that it can be more experimental and fun. Wanted to know if you are following any model for this.

Please find attached a PDF with my comments along with a few examples from old books. Do let me know if you find it confusing. I can elaborate on the confusing bits further with more references if that helps.

Hope you find it useful.

Best,

Vaishnavi

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Hi Vaishnavi,

Thank you very much for your insightful and detailed comments.
I will start implementing these and get back to you soon. 

Best,
Alexei

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Since the vertical metrics in Lora and Lora Devanagari are different, I changed the naming, 

as suggested by Dave. 

The project is now renamed to Sumana Devanagari, and will continue on this github repo:

https://github.com/cyrealtype/Sumana-Devanagari

Thanks

Alexei 

[Alexei Vanyashin]

Mithil Mogare <MITHIL...@mitid.edu.in> is currently doing an internship with me at Cyreal, 

Mithil will be revisiting the Sumana Devanagari Font.

Here is a first exploration of terminal shapes. 

[Alexei Vanyashin]

We are discussing the knot rotation, and would like some input 

on the this design choice. Can the knot be rotated?