Adding Complexity to Letters
To gain confidence in working with letters, it is essential to understand that an alphabet (or a small set of letters in a word) is a visually interrelated system. If one parameter of the letter is changed, the other letter should synchronize and adjust accordingly. Letters exist in the format of a refined musical symphony if we are talking about classical standards of beauty. In the postmodern era, everything is possible.
Therefore, when creating letters, you need to consider all the parameters to make the “visual music” primarily thoughtful, well-composed, and, in result, beautiful. It’s absolutely your choice to play by the rules or disobey them. Still, there should be certain fundamental understandings, which will be discussed in this article.
The parameters to be discussed here are taken from the commonly accepted classification in font design. This chapter uses a simplified classification because our main interest is the drawn Vyaz. Nevertheless, in the section on recommended literature, there will be a reference to more detailed and convenient literature that I refer to.
Stroke
In the previous chapter, we created a monospaced alphabet. Subjectively, it looks pretty rough, and at first sight, it has almost no connection to classical Slavic Vyaz letters. However, that’s not the case.
In this chapter, we will deal with letter elements and their correlations and what rules they live by. In the current alphabet, the strokes have a precise geometric shape, but they lack natural plasticity and aesthetics.
But let’s start by analyzing how the stroke is built. Initially, its form was always determined by the writing instrument, and the following parameters of the stroke are exactly connected to the calligraphic (ductal) movements in letters.
Entasis
The main stroke (or “stem”) in our upper example is plane straight. However, the letter’s stem can be changed if you add the entasis parameter (Greek entasis — tension). The following image shows an example of two types of entasis: direct and reverse.
Experimenting only with the form of the stem can fundamentally change the lettering and overall impression of the letter.
Weight
In this example, the letter weight gradually increases. First, we see an ultra-light A, and in the last example, an ultra-bold one. This parameter directly affects the readability of letters: extreme values of ultrathin and ultrabold are often poorly readable in text.
In this example, the letter saturation gradually increases. First, we see an ultra-light A, and in the last example, an ultra-bold one. This parameter directly affects the readability of letters: extreme values of ultrathin and ultrabold are often poorly readable in text.
Serifs
There is a vast amount of serif forms. Stem classification is not the task of this guide. Remember that one of the best ways to develop your professional skills is to search for references. For illustration, I will provide only a small selection of the most common forms.
The example above is interactive form I made on Readymag.
In this case, the aesthetics of the interaction are secondary. Much more important is to provide an opportunity to apply the existing material in practice and in a game form. During the creation of this interaction, I came up with several new letter variants myself. I’m sure you’ll find many attractive solutions for yourself.
Proportions
As letters are graphic marks in a two-dimensional plane, it makes sense to talk about two quantities: height and width.
Concerning Slavic Vyaz, there are two peculiarities: the higher the letter, the more decorative and ligature opportunities it has; the more compressed it is, the more words you can combine (ligatured) into one line. At the same time, both a compressed and tall set of letters have beautiful aesthetics but significantly lose in terms of legibility.
Pay attention to this image; despite changing only physical parameters, height, and width, the overall character of the letter changes. The small, sturdy A, which might resemble a little dwarf, is visually different from a tall, and elegant A. Perception of letters is often subjective and depends on the contextual knowledge of the viewer, but there are still certain archetypes and basic characterizations that can be associated with letters.
Stroke Contrast
The parameter of letter contrast breaks down into two interrelated subparameters: type and magnitude.
The type of contrast determines the distribution of thickness in the direction of the stroke: which parts are thick, which parts are thin, and how these parts interact with each other. It’s the difference between the thick and thin parts of a letterform’s stroke, not in overall value, but in form factor. Often, the type of contrast is tightly connected to the writing instrument with which the letter was made. In simpler terms, a broad pen, for example, gives an entirely different stroke than a point nib does. But in lettering, there might be intermediate values, and often there’s a complete absence of reference to the writing instrument. After all, you can draw anything and in any way you like.
The image above depicts types of contrast. The image of the same letters is significantly different if they are written with different tools. The example is from the book “Live Typography” by Alexandra Korolkova.
Contrast value is a parameter that characterizes the difference between thick and thin strokes in handwriting and answers the following questions.
What is the thickest or thinnest part?
How are the weights of the letter’s elements related to each other?
Strictly speaking, the contrast value is the ratio of the width of the thickest stroke to the width of the thinnest. At the same time, saturation is the ratio of the stroke’s width to the symbol’s height. The contrast value is sometimes related to the letter weight, but generally, these are entirely different parameters. The font can be high-contrast or low-contrast, and at the same time, have high weight.
Special parameters
When analyzing other people’s letters, it is very common to come across parameters that do not belong to any of the mentioned categories. They can be called “special parameters.”
For example, letters can have these special parameters: swooshes, ligatures, octagonal stroke endings, rough contours, stencil cuts, and much more.
Everything that I’ve mentioned above can be tested independently in the interactive constructor.
Conclusion
It’s worth mentioning that this section only covers some of the methods used to individualize a letter’s shape. Such classic parameters as swooshes, specific purpose, optical size, and many others have remained unmentioned. Those who continue to dive into the details and peculiarities of the letter’s construction will eventually encounter them.
You can play around with interactive elements in the interactive section, but be careful; there are spoilers for the following chapters.
