Work on the Hands of Ruin typeface continues. I now have all the letters, but there’s more fine-tuning to do.
I’ve had plenty of help from a wonderful book: Designing Type by Karen Cheng. (There’s a nice review at The Designer’s Review of Books.) It’s a systematic comparison of the shapes of all the letters of the alphabet, in a variety of typefaces. It points out a number of frequent problems in the design of the letters, and how they’re solved in different faces.
From Cheng’s book I saw that there was a problem with the bottoms of a, d and u: the notch where the bowl connects to the stem at the bottom was rather small and unclear. I slightly thinned the bottom stroke and curved the stem into the serif to make it a little more pronounced. Also, did you know that the serifs at the top of the d and at the top of both stems of the u point to the left? Despite looking at typefaces for years, I didn’t know that.
You’ll notice that the stems on the current version of the typeface are heavier than they were originally. The typeface should be a bit on the heavy side for Hands of Ruin.
I also drew a couple of fs, eventually settling on the one with the tail. It adds a bit of a calligraphic swoosh, but without going to italics like I do with the current logotype.
There’s more work to do, though. It’s occurred to me that the serifs are thinner than the horizontal strokes, as if they don’t have any relationship to each other. I’ve been looking at other typefaces, and while there are a few that have thinner serifs than strokes, they’re pretty rare and it’s usually a very deliberate effect. I think I’d prefer to make mine match.
The spacing is still rather messy. I was hacking the sidebearings (the spaces at the sides of the letters) in an ad hoc manner, but really I should follow the recommendations of actual designers and do it systematically.
It’s strange that I find it easier to show a typeface in progress than music. With music, I want to polish everything before I present it. I suppose that, for whatever reason, the flaws in a piece of music feel much more like personal failings than the flaws in a typeface.
All in all, it’s been an easier process than I expected. Though I imagine that tackling a whole alphabet in upper- and lower-case, plus numbers and punctuation, is a more arduous process, and that the number of possible interactions that you have to think about when any text could be written is vastly more daunting.
The first three tracks are new, as far as I know. The album begins with Plague Walk My Earth. Slow martial snares build to heavier pounding percussion, while bells, orchestral sounds and manipulated opera samples create an oppressive atmosphere. Jouni Havukainen’s malevolent whispers are also buried in the mix. Definition of Being Alive contains a more mechanical rhythm, distorted vocals, and layers of noise over a simple two-note bassline, and Silent Cold Body alternates between pounding drums and the sounds of a nightmarish musical box.