On Logotype Calibration

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 myself fixing other peoples designs. And while it might seem obvious that I would be fixing other people’s typefaces (it has happened on ocasion, though, but when other type designers ask me to help them it gets closer to a mentorship than me doing the designing work), I end up doing logotype calibrations.

1. Logotype Calibration?

Isn’t it just redesign?

“Just”. As if redesigning isn’t a lot of work. But then again, what is logotype calibration, anyway?

Imagine this situation: you’re working in a branding project and, as such, you end up with a logotype. But something’s off — the form is wonky, it doesn’t work with the typefaces you use, it doesn’t survive small sizes and so on — this is where I usually come in.

If you want to check out the process, here’s a video where I go through most of the process of calibrating a logotype (size-specific calibrations were discarded here):

Note: Thanks to Both Bou for agreeing on letting me use his work for the video!

2. When Do I Need My Logotype Calibrated?

Always.

— Yeah, alright, Fábio, nice self-promotion move. [sarcasm]
— Thanks. [sarcasm]

But seriously, always. Or better, there’s only one situation when you don’t need your logotype calibrated: when you don’t have one.

And this doesn’t mean you need to hire someone to do that gig for you: with practise, knowledge and time, anyone can make an impeccable job.

Still, let’s suppose that you’re hiring someone to do that for you. When should you call them on board? There are two optimal situations that makes this smooth sailing:

1. Your logo is done, but could be better and you don’t know how nor why;
2. You need to fine-tune it to several applications (sizes, media and such).

3. Not My Logo

I’m a strong believer that, in this type of gig, I have to respect the designer/studio’s work and take it as not being my own. Any alteration has to be done within reason and not by whim:

• I’m looking at the visually applied results of a brand strategy, not at the brand strategy itself;
• The designer/studio has it own pipeline and process and I shouldn’t interfere with that (a small detail change can hijack and stall the whole branding project);
• It’s a calibration job, not a logotype design job.

Although I take some liberties, the need to respect what was given to me is always in the back of my mind. I don’t want to be creative about it, someone already has done that.

The thing is that someone is trusting me their months-long work to make it better. Someone has put a lot of care into this, probably has time and budget constraints and this is, most likely, a tiny (but very central) fragment of a much larger project.

4. Fine-tunning Form

Form is the singlemost important element in Design.

We need to adapt forms to whatever use and perceptual situation we decide to. So, though it seems like I’m stating the obvious, the whole process of calibration is form correction and/or optimization.

Since examples work great, here’s a mini case study: the Swedish studio Identity Works! hired me to correct a logotype for Hotel At Six, in Stockholm — which led to a custom typeface, but that’s a story for some other time —, where the first step was to correct the form and composition in general, fixing curve smoothness, intersections, spacing, stroke width and some other minor details. Have a look:

As you can see from the image above, they sent me a pretty well developed logotype that pretty close to what it should be.

Still, there was a back-and-forth discussion with the project’s Art Director (props to Nuno Coelho, he was always so nice and dilligent), testing versions of small details, a lot of time spent looking through a magnifying lens and a completely non-eco-friendly waste of paper.

So, the first step was to strive for a harmonious shape, with the concern of making it to visually flow smoothly. The most obvious detail is the t‘s bottom-most part, that was too shy in the original. But, for example, the S was too lumpy, out of being too geometric:

The greater amount of time in the development of this project was to get the inktraps just right. Gladly, this was a size-specific design and I could test the final media with satisfactory accuracy, so the stroke widths, intersections and curves were tweaked until I couldn’t make it better. The result was this assymetrical beauty:

Working with such thin lines, on the threshold of being ignored by the rasterizer, is a challenge. It’s, in fact, a crash-course on microtweaking, where 1/1000 nudges make a difference. Stroke modulation (yes, it has modulation) has to be perfect, since any difference in tension surfaces immediatly. Visual mass is so little that is unforgiving — which means this project was really fun for me.

5. Applications

In a branding strategy, a logotype can appear in a wide array of media and sizes, through a wide array of processes. Digital and print are vague terms that encapsulate formats, rasterizers, printing methods, papers, software, screens and so on. The list is endless.

To predeterminate as much of these as possible and to deliver context-specific solutions is key to making logotype calibrations. And there will always be variation, always.

Trying to achieve perfect consistency in applications is to aspire to make order out of chaos. Still, this is the goal.

And, in spite of all the technical constraints and real-world entropy — and with the notion that flawlessness is a myth —, any approximation is welcome.

A logotype is a set of graphic pieces, each one of them context-specific.

6. Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article! If so, please share it with your folks!

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And if you’re wondering about talking to me about it, you can always say hi!

Until next time!

The Art Of Eyeballing – Part IV: The Stroke (Optics)

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 adjustments to stroke.

May I state it right now: this is not rocket science and the more elaborated considerations about stroke (such as modulation, for example) will be covered in the next articles. For now, we want to approach a very simple case – a monoline construction – and try to achieve balance.

And without further ado (and because I’m starting to feel way to serious while writing this), let’s skip to the good part.

1. Horizontal vs. Vertical

Let’s get right to it: in the image above, which are the thickest strokes? Vertical or horizontal? Take your time. Horizontal, right?

If you thought “they’re equal”, you’re right. But do they seem equal? To me, they don’t. And to most people, they also don’t.

But for many years, I simply trusted the computer. And, as always, the computer was right, so who was I to judge mathematical perfection? Well, this is about perceptual balance, not the first. Again, trust your eyes.

And here’s a correction (with horizontal strokes being about 1% thinner than the vertical ones):

But why does this happen? In honesty, I don’t really know, although I have some theories about it:

1. We have two eyes, distributed horizontally, making our area of eyesight wider than taller; and this might add relevance to vertically distributed elements;
2. In type, we have millennia of broadnib and flat brush writing, usually with 30 to 40º angle from an horizontal position, making horizontal strokes wider than vertical ones. But again, this could be due to a perception/optical/neurological phenomena.

If you’re wondering about how this works in typefaces, have a look here:

2. Orthogonal vs. Diagonal

Consider the following example:

Again, all the 3 lines have exactly the same stroke width. We already talked about how to compensate the horizontal line, so let’s just do that:

If it wasn’t obvious in the first image, now it is: the diagonal line also looks heavier than the orthogonal ones.

So, for comprehension’s sake, let’s give the diagonal line the same stroke width has the (already compensated) horizontal line:

… which makes the diagonal line too thin.

Before we get into the solution, I’d like you to consider a couple of things:

• This example is not random, i.e., I’ve picked a 45º angle to the diagonal line for a reason that you’re about to find out;
• We can only apply this to monoline fonts, although this is just a starting point (the next articles will cover more cases and correspondent corrections).

So, if neither of the horizontal nor the vertical strokes’ width is applicable to the 45º diagonal (which, again, is half-way rotated between the orthogonal axis), what happens if we pick the exact in-between stroke width? Here you go:

Does it look alright? *wink*

And now, you might be asking about other angles. If we apply the same width stroke to any diagonal, we get this:

If you compare the first two lines, the second looks too thin; and if you compare the last two, the former looks too thick.

So here we can start to acknowledge that the thickness of a diagonal line should vary according to it’s angle, and that it’s a progression between the horizontal and vertical widths.

Here’s a linear progression of angles and widths:

2.1 Tackling Slants and Widths

If you’re anything like me, by now you’re doing some stressful mental schemes on how to calculate the exact width of a diagonal, depending on the horizontal and vertical strokes’ widths.

So, in order to save you some stressful times, here’s a quick and dirty way to do it:

1. Draw an ellipse that has the same width as the vertical stroke and the same height as the horizontal stroke;
2. Adjust the strokes to be tangents to this ellipse.

Two steps method. This is what I call workflow optimization! Here’s a visual representation of the method:

And, to implement a tradition, here are these principles applied to type:

3. Straight vs. Curve

And we’re coming closer to an end.

Let’s start with the following image, where all the strokes are exactly the same (and the O is already overshot):

And now, let’s make the corrections that we already know about (horizontal and vertical, in this case):

Same kind of question: do the straight and curved strokes feel equal? You might want to take a step back it see the images from afar.

The H seems to pop out more that the O. And, as I mentioned, the O is already overshot, so it’s not a case of overshooting. Or is it?

Well, curves seem thinner that straight lines for the same reason we have to overshoot them: a lot of white space is created and positive mass is decreased, so we have to compensate for that.

But the thing to retain here is that curves seem thinner than straight lines and the amount of compensation needed isn’t as extreme as the one we do in the verticle / horizontal cases, so it’s closer to an overshooting compensation.

Let’s correct our example:

4. How Much?

If you’ve noticed, I wasn’t blunt about how much to compensate; in fact, I only gave one example in §1.

I could provide rules-of-thumb that would be percentage ranges of compensation, but I feel that this is a trap.

First (and again), I advise you not to make calculations; providing you such rules (on how much to compensate) would oblige you to make these calculations and I want you to design as freely as you can.

So take what you’ve learned today and trust you’re eye. If it looks awkward, well, it’s awkward. Teach yourself to pay attention to the forms, counterforms and whitespace. Inspect the curve/line segments on by one and compare them to the whole form. And to the whole group of forms.

Even if we dabble in maths and geometry, here, keep in mind that these are means to an end, not the end itself.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article, see you in the next one! Cheers!

References:

• The Stroke – Noordzij, Gerrit (Hyphen Press, 2005);
• Size-specific adjustments to type designs – Ahrens, Tim / Mugikura, Shoko (Just Another Foundry);
• Make Your Fonts Suck Less – Phinney, Thomas (video)

Calibrating Lucky Stripes

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 freedom and, man, guitars. Guitars are super-cool. Specially Ricardo’s.

But the most important thing that happened was that some time passed and we could see how the lettering behaved in many different settings and applications, thus showing us what worked well and what wasn’t working.

This article is about this: what was wrong and how we fixed it.

1. Lucky Stripes?

Before we go and talk about lettering, you should check Ricardo’s guitars. He a luthier that makes custom cigar box guitars (meaning: the resonance box of the guitar is actually a cigar box), where he recycles materials to actually build them.

Check this beauty out, for example:

He even made one for Seasick Steve! Here’s a video of Seasick Steve playing a Lucky Stripes guitar:

So, if you want to contact him, do it: he’s super nice!

2. The Past

So, as we were talking, I doodled something, just to retain some ideas of what we were talking about.

Here’s the sketch:

Although most would feel ashamed of posting this in the interwebs (let alone showing this as a sketch to a client), I’m doing it anyways, for the following reasons:

1. This is a visual synthesis of the chat we had that in no way tries to be an usable solution;
2. From this I went directly to the computer, since I’m not a big fan of solving stuff on paper;
3. There’s nothing wrong with ugly sketches, simply because they’re sketches;
4. I don’t want to feel constrained to a very precise sketch while I’m working in vector, since it blocks my mind from trying something new;
5. And I don’t want to give the impression that a sketch is super-polished artwork. The amount of time that takes to produce an impeccable hand-made drawing is the same (or more) than a digital one, so it’s unrealistic to show something very close to final.

After I took a picture of the sketch with my cellphone, I did a quick center-line vector digitization of the sketch in Illustrator, sent the bitmap to oblivion and started tweaking it, until I got something like this:

Next step? Width Tool!

Although incredibly buggy (we’ll talk about that in a minute), the Width Tool is awesome to work with stroke modulation. Here, I maxed the stroke out, trying to find how thick the weight could go, and then started to add the thin strokes, in a pointed nib sort of logic: thicker down strokes, thinner upstrokes.

After getting close to what I wanted, I expanded the stroke, getting a Bézier hell like this:

And with modulation artifacts like this:

So, unless you want a destroy look in your piece, using the width tool as final art is a no-go, since it produces, as we just saw, an incredible amount of points (read here, here and here), not-so-smooth curves and a lot of strange artifacts.

So, as always, I redrew the whole thing on top of this, with proper Bézier point placement and with some minor tweaks. Here’s the result (with the previous drawing in red):

And BAM!, work done! Well, sort of.

3. The Problems

We were happy, for a while. I guess that, in my case, I overlooked some of the composition issues because I didn’t had some distance to see it more analytically, and, to be honest, since then I’ve learned some more things to look out for.

So, having the chance to tweak it again, after some time, I was thrilled! I had a long time to look at it and think “I’d change this” or “That doesn’t look right”, and now it was time to solve it!

Anyway, let’s talk about some of the problems.

3.1 White Space

The overall interplay of positive and negative space here is pretty much inconsistent and with two major mistakes:

1. The amount of white space between the L and the u is huge, sometimes appearing as part of two different words;
2. The r is a disaster: too blobby, too close to the t‘s bar (overcrowding that area) and the loop is not readable at all.

3.2 Flow

In general, the design had too many (apparent) corners, resulting in a somewhat breaky flow, with too many places for the eye to decelerate and make a sharp turn. Since we were looking for a smooth result, this wasn’t desired.

At the same time, although some irregularity in letter size and slope was intended, in some cases the letters were too small (like the u), too big (like the r) and too slanted (S and t).

3.3 Line Consistency

If you ever worked with a pointed nib or a pointed/conical brush, you’ve probably have guessed that the modulation is very weird.

Let’s think of the thin lines as the thinnest that the tool we’re trying to emulate is capable of doing. With this said, there’s some space for variation in the thickest parts of the strokes, but not so much for the thinnest (although possible).

I happened to do it the other way around: the thicker strokes are pretty consistent, while the thinner… well, they’re a mess.

 3.2 Size issues

The main reason for calibrating this logo was that it didn’t work properly at small sizes, for two reasons:

1. Due to poor design;
2. Due to bad printing conditions and ink spread.

The following image show us what happens with loss of resolution and with ink spread. If you want to test your stuff, this was done playing with incremental Gaussian Blur and then applying a Threshold filter.

So the most immediate things that happen and severely compromise legibility and form recognition are:

1. The counters and inner forms that are too small immediately disappear. In this case, the c and the e;
2. The overcrowded areas (like the t‘s bar and the r, or the upper and lower part of the y) become unreadable black blobs.

4. The Solutions

The goal was to correct the previous problems without changing the form too much, since Ricardo has developed a respectable fan base in the time period.

Here’s a list of some of the most important changes:

1. Opened the counters, to avoid the ink spread so that they wouldn’t disappear;
2. Corrected the line inconsistencies;
3. Corrected the sharp turns, in order to become smoother;
4. Corrected the i‘s dot to balance it’s weight and the white space around it;
5. Corrected the r, paying attention to the loop and the horizontal stroke;
6. Harmonized the u and the space between it and the L;
7. Added some ink-traps in problematic areas;
8. Simplified the p‘s and k‘s vertical stem (there was no need to retain the calligraphic quality of it, since it made the bottom blobby);
9. Altered the swash in order to become more organic and smoother.

And here’s a side-by-side comparison of the old lettering with the new:

And here’s the blur + threshold result:

 5. Wrapping Up

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Cheers!

The Art of Eyeballing – Part III: Overshooting

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 the web for a definition (as I just did), you’ll end up reading about economics theory or mechanical engineering jargon. Is this somehow related or interesting to this topic? Not really, but amusing, nonetheless.

Overshooting, in visual arts, is the optical correction of forms in relation to other graphic elements, more specifically to their construction rectangle, in order to achieve perceptual balance. Still amusing, right?

Let’s check the About.com definition of overshooting:

The main parts of letters generally fall between the baseline and x-height or cap height. The overshoot is where rounded portions of a letter (such as O or n) extend slightly above or below those lines. This slight overshoot creates an optical illusion that the letters are the same relative size as non-rounded (flat) letters like L or H.

Apart from the casual humor, I wrote that almost unintelligible definition because this second one is incomplete:

1. It doesn’t contemplate shapes with straight lines that need optical compensation (A and V, for example);
2. Has no consideration for horizontal overshooting.

 1.1 A Matter Of Perceptual Mass

So, what is this all about?

Well, as we discussed on chapter 2, the way we perceive things around us isn’t accurate (for biological and cultural reasons), let alone mathematically perfect.

Using the classical example, consider this image:

Now, do the circle and triangle feel to you that they have the same weight has the squares? Truth is, they’re all the same height, they just have a different area, or more precisely, a different visual mass.

But then again, area and visual mass are not the same thing. If they had the same area, they would look like this:

2. Perception versus Geometry

Of course, there’s more to this. As we could see above (and discussed in the previous chapter), being mathematically precise doesn’t provide visual or perceptual balance.

So, lets approach the problems of the previous image and correct them.

2.1 Alignment

As you can  guess, all the elements are aligned to their center. But if we try to come um to a base and top line, we would get something like this:

And, if we’re trying to achieve a stable composition, this doesn’t seem to be working out very well, right?

Lets then take the square as our standard element and extend the lines from it. We’ll get something like this:

The most evident problem here is the triangle’s bottom. Oh, sorry, the bottom-most part. *blushes*

So, apart from the platonic discussion about the sexyness of triangles, our seems to be falling down from the baseline, for two reasons:

1. It creates a huge amount of mass below the baseline;
2. Since the triangle’s base (or bottom, now I can’t get this off my head!) is perfectly horizontal, it’s pretty much stable, as a form; hence, the need for compensation below it’s baseline is nonexistent.

OK, now lets align the triangle to the baseline:

The base (I’m avoiding the word bottom, now. Or maybe not.) just got better. But what about the top? Too much stuff protruding there, right? As we saw in the first image, reducing the square to align the square just doesn’t work. And neither aligning it just to the baseline.

Lets try to scale it down a bit, while keeping the bottom (there we go again) aligned to the square:

Ah!, relief!

Still, the circle seems odd. The reason for this is the same: too much mass protruding above and below. Scaling it a bit down, aligned to the square’s center, we’ll get this as result:

Success! And here’s the composition without the guidelines:

2.2 Whitespace

Apart from being a really cool (or incredibly lame) name for a classic rock type designer’s band, every time you affect a form, you affect the white space around it: there is a constant play between positive and negative form and achieving balance of form requires attention to both, as New Age as this can sound. Or Confucian.

So, if we consider the vertical extremes of a form for optical compensation, we should do the same the horizontal ones.

Usually, horizontal compensation is neglected when we talk about overshooting, because it’s a matter of metrics. But since we are talking about perceptual (or optic, although the latter is not a very precise term, as we could see in chapter 2) compensation and this is not exclusive to type design, but rather generalistic, visually speaking, we should talk about this.

Consider the following image:

The circle and the triangle are compensated according to §2.1 and equal space is maintained between each element. The reason why squares are paired is to have a reference of spacing, since we saw that the square has no need for optical compensation. Here’s an image with the spacing margins:

Due to the triangle and circle’s irregular form (or better, non-square form), a big amount of white space is created, making these seem separated further apart from the squares, in comparison to the space between a pair of squares.

Again, we’re not aiming for mathematical calculations of space, but visual balance. With this said, if we were to calculate the white space area and make it equal, the circle and the triangle would overlap its neighbour square.

Instead, we’ll reduce the side spacing in the same proportions as we did vertically:

And here’s the same composition, without the guides and spacing blocks:

2.3 Some considerations

1. I haven’t told you how much you should compensate, with the exception of the previous example. I did so because there isn’t an exact answer: we could talk about ranges, but these are form-dependent;
2. If we’re designing free-form elements, as most glyphs are, the notion of exact calculations seems like a complete waste of time. It’s easier to test and decide than to write a complex software just to make that kind of decision for you and, most likely, with an unappealing result;
3. The reason why I was able to tell you to compensate the same horizontally that was made vertically is because these forms are symmetrical horizontally, and, in the case of the circle, symmetrical in both axis. And to tell you the truth, the compensation in the triangle’s horizontal spacing is slightly bigger than vertically (meaning the spacing was further reduced), to keep a nice flowing rhythm.

4. Counter-forms

As stated in § 2.2, there’s an ever-going dialogue between positive and negative forms; and I say form instead of outline because we should also consider negative forms inside positive ones, because this also has an effect in optical compensation.

Here’s an example:

Here are some observations regarding the previous image:

• Proportionally, when we apply a stroke inside our forms, the amount of white space reduction, proportionally, is bigger in the circle than in the square;
• A thick stroke makes the circle look smaller than the square, for the reason above;
• A thin stroke goes above the top alignment, making the circle look bigger than before;
• The stroke has also an effect on horizontal spacing and should be compensated accordingly.

The conclusion here is that we should increase the amount of compensation as we increase the stroke, paying attention to balancing the counters. In fact, when we have counter forms, they overpower the form’s outline and their equilibrium becomes more significant than the solid form itself.

5. Conclusion

So here we covered the basics of overshooting, opening a door to the world of optical calibration.

Thanks for reading the article and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you believe that it can be useful to others, please share it!

See you in the next article!

References & Further Reading:

• Type Mechanics: 001 – Frere-Jones, Tobias

The Art of Eyeballing – Part I: Introduction

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 find anything of my liking, I get upset. And since I rarely read fiction, my collection ranges from neuroscience to economics, from art theory to politics, from hypnosis to type design.

And, maybe for professional reasons, typography books are the ones that annoy me most. With all the hype of typography around the web, type-related publications are everywhere. But most of them are superficial font catalogs, recipe books that tell you not to use Adobe’s optical kerning and other things like “this is a stem, this is a bowl” – “and now that you know this, you’re in the 1% of the graphic design population that are good in what they do”.

But I always have a look on what bookstores have on typography. And there are priceless gems: The Elements of Typographic Style is a must have, Counterpunch is a delicious read, The Stroke is fascinating from start to end, Size-specific Adjustments to Type Designs is worth every penny, Cómo Crear Tipografías is a good read, and the list goes on.

Every time I feel that these books give me some insight, no matter how niche they are, I get happy. Maybe the feeling that a 40-year-old woman gets out of the latest Richard Bach book is the same that I get out of a ultra-niche type-related technical book.

And yet, I still have lots of doubts.

The métier of producing type is a constant doubt-and-choose-and-doubt process. So, this series of articles is my personal view on how I tackle (or try to!) these daily things, an ongoing exercise on thinking what I do.

Hope you enjoy it!