Fixing Rubik's Hebrew

[Meir Sadan]

Hey all,

I'm a new member among the Google font designers here! I've been tasked to make corrections and modifications to several existing libre font projects. I've been working on a font family named Rubik, commissioned for an exhibition from Swiss designers Hubert & Fischer:

http://hubertfischer.com/work/type-rubik

The typeface in whole is impressive – it features an extended Latin set, as well as Cyrillic and Hebrew to match, in 5 weights ranging from Light to Black. The design itself leans towards the geometric with relatively open counters that work well in a grid of Rubik's cube parts.

I was asked to correct the Hebrew character set so it would better suit contemporary letters. I've started with the thin weight, correcting widths, proportions and redrawing some of the glyphs entirely, here is the original set (on the right) compared to the current revision by me:

I tried maintaining the overall color and feel of the typeface, as well as the relatively open apertures and geometric nods. Some letters such as ג (gimel) and מ (mem) had to be completely redrawn to be correctly recognized by Hebrew readers, and some - like ז (zayin) and ש (shin) needed just a few nudges to make the proportions more correct. Hebrew, unlike the Latin script, is a fairly "ungeometric" script with odd angles and unconventional shapes. So my revisions tend to move slightly further away from the geometric style but still have some geometry in them.

Although there have been several Hebrew designs that are considered very geometric - such as Haim and Narkiss Block, they tend to miss a lot of the roundness that is expressed in this particular font, and I tried preserving that feel as well, perhaps similarly to what Zvi Narkiss has done in Narkiss New (without being too much like it...)

I've also managed to add vowel marks (nikkud) to the light set, and in the next week I will start work on the black master, so that I could export the entire 5-weight range.

You can follow the development of the font on GitHub, as well:

http://meirsadan.github.io/rubik-hebrew/

Would love anyone's thoughts on this, as this is all work in progress and shapes will probably shift around some more.

Good night!

Meir

[Meir Sadan]

Did some work on the black master, just quick adjustments so I could see a range of weights.

Will refine these shapes in the coming week.

[Ben Nathan]

Hi Meir !

Great start, it's a great improvement from the original.

I like the ת, the נ, and the מ - great solutions and design.

I would try to make the font more round in places that you feel are appropriate (like shin / tet).

It's easier for me to design than to write, so here's a quick redesign I did 

(the underlines letters are the one I changed).

Cheers!

Ben

[Meir Sadan]

Woah Ben, that's impressive

I think the deconstructions you made for several of the glyphs are super and I'll definitely use them (aleph, ayin...)

I also think your solution for the ד dalet makes more sense and adds legibility

The ג gimel you drew looks a bit too similar to נ nun, I prefer the line to be higher – it does need more refining, though, maybe I'll take it a notch lower

And I'm still asking myself whether to make the tet/shin rounder – it looks great but it might close the counters too much though

The terminals on the ק qof and ל lamed should end in a straight angle per the font's styling so I'll probably use a different solution

Thanks so much! This helps a lot.

[Meir Sadan]

This week I incorporated some of Ben's revisions for the glyphs (as mentioned in the previous thread) and it certainly improved several of the interpolations (especially א aleph and ע ayin)

Today I continued to work on diacritics (nikkud) - enlarged the marks and spaced them better from the letter (I'm using Yanek Iontef's Open Sans Hebrew as a reference to the proportions and placements)

Next is doing the same for the black weight and hoping it will all interpolate well :>

[Meir Sadan]

Pe is a bit of a tricky letter in black weights, as its "nosey" middle stroke needs to create a big enough counter for the dagesh point to fit in. I decided to create an alternative shape for the black weight:

Notice how the black פ doesn't have the part that goes inward in the middle horizontal stroke. What do you think?

I've also change some more of the letters in the black weight so that they will work better with the nikud, and hopefully move to address spacing/kerning issue in the coming week.

[Meir Sadan]

Hey everyone,

These past couple of weeks I spent refining different aspects of Rubik and creating the Italics. After a lot of spacing and diacritic positioning, attached is the latest version that I submit for testing. There's also a new name for the improved Hebrew typeface, "Hebrik". Hopefully it'll be incorporated back to the original Rubik project. Would love to know what you think.

It's been a bit hectic technically – I'm working with Glyphs and saving UFO files, working with separate masters for each weight and style so that certain OT features and glyphs could be better adjusted and also because the original Rubik glyphs aren't made for interpolation. Glyphs is okay with saving Glyphs files but less so with UFOs.

In the next few days I'll hopefully have David Hebrew ready for submission.

[Dave Crossland]

Hi

Great stuff :)

On 19 November 2015 at 23:45, Meir Sadan <meir...@gmail.com> wrote:

It's been a bit hectic technically – I'm working with Glyphs and saving UFO files, working with separate masters for each weight and style so that certain OT features and glyphs could be better adjusted and also because the original Rubik glyphs aren't made for interpolation. Glyphs is okay with saving Glyphs files but less so with UFOs.

I recommend using Glyphs as intended, and exporting the instances as UFO at the end

--

Cheers
Dave

[Liron Lavi Turkenich]

Wow Meir, 

I am so happy you were asked and did those corrections for the Hebrew. The original version had many problems, and I find your version a huge improvement. I also find your tweaks for a bit less geometric add much to the typeface as a whole. 

Few small notes: 

- I think you have alefdagesh missing from your character set. 

- In the black weight, some of the Hebrew joints become cluttered. Your solution to the joint of the Shin (thinning it) is really good, and matches well the Latin solution to the same problem. Perhaps add it to those as well? Mem, Gimmel, Tav. (Maybe the Alef as well?)

- Perhaps the leg of the Lamed  (again, black weight only) could be extended a bit further to the left?

- I thought your solution for the Pe in the black weight was really good. I saw that you decided not to use it in the final files. Why?  (The dagesh is really being cluttered inside the Pe in this weight)

- In the light weight- the separate stroke of the Kuf and He don’t start from the same hight. I think it would be better to go with the hight of the He. 

I liked your sharing of the process. A lot can be learnt from it, so thank you! The scope of the 10 weights all with correct positions for the Nikkud is huge, and very impressive. 

Have a lovely evening, 

Liron

[Meir Sadan]

Liron,

Thank you so much! I'm currently rethinking some of the letters – Hubert & Fischer, the original designers of Rubik, wanted to take some of the letters back to a more geometric style – so I'm taking your comments into account in the process as well.

Meir

[Meir Sadan]

Hey,

Just updating I've reworked several of the glyphs, as well as adjusted the entire typeface to work better with interpolations as an alternative to the original (FontLab?) uninterpolated version. See fonts attached and also in the GitHub repo!

Meir