Daser Regular - A Typeface
The history of language and type has always been an interest of mine and learning more about it in school only made me want to explore it deeper. To gain an even better understanding of type, I will create my own typeface.
Credit: Jeremy Zero - Unsplash
Over the summer of 2020, I spent some time looking at how typefaces vary from each other on a very fine level, comparing attributes such as overall height to width, ratios of crossbars to stem width, x-heights, etc. A’s in particular fascinated me because they are only 3 lines but they can be very distinct. I made notes on what I liked about each one to inform my decisions on making mine.
With a grid notebook, and using a height of 10 for my cap-height, I began sketching capital letters. I didn’t have any weight or width in mind, I just wanted to do what felt natural to my hand while keeping in mind how I would actually write. Many sketches for each letter were made until I felt satisfied with it. I would then scan the page and trace it in Illustrator before exporting it to my first attempt with a free font program, FontForge. Tracing in FontForge is possible, but I found Illustrator to be easier to use because I could do many letters in one file then export them individually as .svgs.
FontForge quickly became somewhat of a pain to use as I found that free software sometimes isn’t really the best option. I looked around for other options for Windows since Glyphs is not available and found FontLab 7, which seemed to be a promising alternative.
Designing the lowercase during the winter quarter was a different experience because I was already familiar with the process and had already learned how to make do with the software. Setting the x-height required many iterations and experiments. What looked good on paper didn’t always translate to the screen.
I felt freer to play around and find a way to make them more cohesive. I went way out of my comfort zone by working in two-story a’s and g’s. Typically I find that I’m not a fan of that style, but I have come to find over time that they add a bit of a mature feel to sans-serifs when they feel childlike otherwise.
Timeframe
September 2020 - March 2021
Roles
Type Design
Concept
Layout
Tools
Pen & Paper
Adobe Illustrator
FontLab 7