Author: Fábio Duarte Martins

This is a written (and expanded) version of the talk I gave, titled “Meaningless and Inhuman Gestures: Computational Explorations in Asemic Writing”, in Ligatures 2025. One subject that I’ve been chewing on for decades now, is the mechanics of writing: how a stroke is produced, how the tools and its manipulation change its modulation, how […]

0. Introduction If you ended up here, you probably heard about Optician Sans. I mean, it’s everywhere, from Fast Company to Gizmodo, introducing me to the experience of finding time to do e-mail and podcast interviews. I have even considered turning Behance notifications off, due to the constant phone buzzing (yes, I have now turned […]

0. Introduction So, yeah, I’m a type designer. And there are numerous situations where I end up stating that “I make fonts”, so that people can have an idea about what I do for a living. But drawing letters and packing them into working fonts is just a slice of it: I very often find […]

0. Introduction What typeface should I use? I’ve lost track of how many times I get this asked. Probably twice a week, maybe more. Even in projects where I work as a consultant, this question is usually the first step — even with amazingly skilled graphic designers. Heck, when Michael Paul Young asked me to […]

Part I: Introduction | Part II: Learning To See | Part III: Overshooting | Part IV: The Stroke (Optics) 0. Introduction Welcome back! I’ve been rewriting this article for ages now, so I’m glad to finally share this with you! Today we’re going through a subject that it’s apparently simple, but the degree of complexity and abstraction can escalate pretty quickly, […]

1. Concept Grafista is (semi-)monospaced typeface that has two sets: a text typeface and a texture library. The reason why I called it semi-monospaced is because these two sets have different widths: the text set’s width is half of the textures’ one, making it possible to combine both in the same text box. The idea […]

It’s been some time! To take some time off the oh-so-many huge projects in the making and craft something for you that’s worth your while, today we’ll be talking about some typography tricks that I find helpful and that I haven’t seen anywhere or that I’ve found the information available unsatisfying. Another plus for you, […]

Part I | Part II | Part III Welcome back to this series about the production of Maximal. If you’re a newcomer, don’t forget to check Part I and Part II, so you know where you’re at; or better, what we’re talking about here. This article is about programming. Since we’re dealing with such a […]

Part I | Part II | Part III I hope you guys had a great Easter (if you’re culturally inclined for such practice – if not, I hope you had a great week). So, here we are, back on track. In the previous post, we talked about some preparatory steps regarding the conceptualization of the font […]

Part I | Part II | Part III 0. Introduction Today, while I was waking up, I came up with an idea on how to do something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. But before I tell you what the idea was, let me contextualize you. I’ve been wanting to cover, log […]

Edit: Since the release of this article, a couple of things changed: the project is now called Typerobics and it has a dedicated microsite! If you’ve been paying attention to my Facebook or Twitter feeds (or even Behance, but not as much up-to-date), you’ve certainly noticed that I’ve been posting a custom lettered word (almost) […]

If you’re following me on Facebook, you probably know that I’ve recently asked for suggestions on what should I write about. Michał Jarociński suggested that I should do something about legibility, wayfinding and signage. Curiously enough, not so long ago, I’ve started a thread on Typophile (and a discussion on Reddit’s Typography board) about the function/use of […]

Index Introduction | Learning To See | Overshooting | The Stroke: Optics This is the first article of three, in our series, to talk about the stroke. We briefly introduced the idea (in the previous article) that the stroke width has an effect on perception and, for this reason, should be adjusted. So, this article is just about that: optical […]

Some years ago (maybe a couple, maybe more: I excel at losing track of time), Ricardo Gomes, from Lucky Stripes Cigar Box Guitars, needed a script lettering for his guitars. For me, this was a really cool project: making scripts is always fun and challenging, I could do a fast project (since it’s lettering), lots of […]

0. Introduction If you’ve been visiting this blog, you might be wondering why I’m writing another article about this subject. You’ve probably read Bézier Curves And Type Design: A Tutorial and Bézier Curve Quick Tips: Two Methods For Smooth Curves, along with AGSC’s article So What’s the Big Deal with Horizontal & Vertical Bezier Handles Anyway?, and […]

Fixing curves, for me, is an every day activity. Sometimes they look oddly pointy, too steep or too wide, guiding my eyes to awkwardness. And since I’m an optimization freak (as you could tell on my previous article on Bézier curves), I end up using some procedures to tackle problems. So, today I want to […]

Index Introduction | Learning To See | Overshooting | The Stroke: Optics You probably heard about overshooting, specially if you came from a visual arts background. If you haven’t, welcome! And if you have, well, it doesn’t hurt to refresh our knowledge and explore what we know in a more in-depth way. 1. Definition So, what’s overshooting? If you search […]

With the implementation of the em unit in CSS and it’s handy use in responsive webdesign, all of a sudden it got famous outside the typographic realm. 1. The Simple Answer An em is the same size as the font’s point size. There, as simple as that. But if we already have the point unit, […]

Index Introduction | Learning To See | Overshooting | The Stroke: Optics 1. We don’t see with the eyes In 1963, David H. Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, two neurophysiologists that won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1981 for their work in information processing in the visual system, conducted a somewhat bizarre experiment: they sewn one eye shut to newborn cats and waited three […]

Note: This series of articles are a work in progress. It’s in the process of being written, so there might be corrections along the way, as well as new articles. Index Introduction | Learning To See | Overshooting | The Stroke: Optics I own a lot of books. It’s my consumerist pitfall: whenever I go to a bookshop and don’t […]

[2026/09/18] Very old article, rewritten. The overall corpus is preserved, with added notes and edits. As the title suggests, this is a brief collection of quick tips on kerning and metrics that I find valuable. Although aimed at type designers, this article might be valuable for kerning in DTP software or for logo designers. Anything […]

[2026/09/14]: This article became the most popular I’ve ever written. Since it was written a long time ago, I decided to rework it: polishing the wording to facilitate comprehension, fixing dead links and typos, and adding interactivity. Still, it remains faithful to the original — a lot of people discussed it and helped me flesh […]