

Free Font: Norwester - benoitg
http://jamiewilson.io/norwester/

======
jamiewilson
Hey everybody. I'm the designer of Norwester. Thanks for the interest and
feedback. Yea, the font is really limited right now. Please use it judiciously
as there are a lot of glyphs not accounted for, as digitalengineer pointed
out. Please let me know if you have any special requests or catch any thing
not looking right. Thanks again!

~~~
brandons
Here are some possible improvements that jumped out at me:

\- Certain letters including C, D, and S appear shorter than other letters,
because of their round tops. Optical illusions cause letterforms with round
edges (C, O, S) or pointed edges (A, V, W) to need to extend slightly farther
in the rounded/pointed direction to appear to be the same size as other
straighter shapes. This is called “overshoot”
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_%28typography%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_%28typography%29)).

\- The spacing and kerning both need work. Letter pairs such as OV, FR, IA,
AI, KE, EY, OX, MY, AP, and RT are too far apart. I’ve found that it’s easier
to kern if you look at your outlines upside-down and backwards (I know Fontlab
Studio has a built-in option to preview text in this manner, Glyphs might as
well). Doing so helps your brain regard the outlines purely as shapes without
getting sidetracked by their semiotic significance.

Another trick to type design is understanding that mathematical/geometric
precision do not always result in the _appearance_ of mathematical/geometric
precision. Measurements that should theoretically be equal (such as the
heights of letters as previously mentioned) often need to be fudged in order
to look equal to the imperfect human eye.

The forums at Typophile are a great place to have your work critiqued by
professional type designers
([http://typophile.com/forum/1](http://typophile.com/forum/1)). Or, feel free
to contact me if any of this is interesting and you want to know more. :)

~~~
jamiewilson
Very helpful. Thank you very much. I'll keep tweaking the kerning and consider
those optical adjustments moving forward.

------
bbx
Great job. I saw this font on Designer News yesterday and downloaded it
instantly.

I think creating a font from scratch could become a designer's _rite of
passage_. It involves usability, aesthetics, and technical knowledge (kerning,
weights, character encoding, horizontal and vertical metrics...). I always
thought about creating one myself but usually ended up browsing the web for
original and better designed fonts.

You got me questioning my behavior.

~~~
barsky
Possibly, but graphic design and type design are vastly different fields. A
good graphic designer isn't necessarily a good type designer.

~~~
mortenjorck
Indeed. A good visual designer should know how to take a typeface apart, but
you really need to become a type designer to put one together.

------
casca
Thank you for putting the license in the zipfile. We've had to avoid using
certain fonts because it wasn't possible to identify the license.

Can you please put another file with a link back to your website and the
request to donate to the International Justice Mission if used?

~~~
Noxchi
Ahh, lawyers destroying business opportunities since forever

------
digitalengineer
Looks nice. It's Open Type so thats cool. However, no serious designer would
choose this font for production as it is right now though. You dev's would
call it 'Aplha' or 'Beta'. It contains only the 'Western' letters and even for
that, not most variables. This makes it dangerous to use for your company's
branding. Imagine if you want to write an é, ü, î or what not. You can not.
So, nice to try a bit but be careful using it for production.

If you wish to compare it to something, have a look at these free fonts:
[http://www.exljbris.com/](http://www.exljbris.com/) They're free for the
Roman, Bold, Heavy, Italic and small caps, but if you want more variables, say
a Heavy Italic you pay a small fee.

~~~
mbreese
How would you make it better? At the end of the page the author acknowledges
the need for help in making the font better. I know nothing about making
fonts, but you clearly have some ideas.

So, what needs to be added before a professional designer would consider this
font?

~~~
digitalengineer
Idon't mean to say this is not good, but as it is now it's not complete. A lot
of the glyphs (characters) are missing. I'm not talking about ff or other
combinations that can be replaced by a specific glyph for typographical
purity, or non-western letters (Central European, Russian, Turkish, Chines...)
but rather the extra's even our own Latin based fonts need.

------
narad
This font will be great to use in headlines. Will this font be available in
Google Fonts [1]? Because Google hosts many fonts under SIL Open Font License
.

[1] [http://www.google.com/fonts](http://www.google.com/fonts)

------
benoitg
Just to be clear: I submitted this but I'm not related to the OP. I just found
it on [http://sidebar.io/](http://sidebar.io/) earlier today and liked both
the open license and the fact that the author seems open to suggestions.

~~~
jamiewilson
Thanks for sharing my font! you're awesome.

~~~
benoitg
You're most welcome! I was, in fact, surprised nobody had submitted it. I love
what you've done here and hope you'll be able to push it forward. If I had one
request, it would be french diacritical marks, but I will definitely find uses
for the font as-is.

Thanks for the hard work!

------
haddr
It's a pity this font can't be used in many countries due to lack of any
diacritics... :(

~~~
jamiewilson
Sorry for the lack of those glyphs. I really hope to expand it soon to make it
more useful. Thanks for the interest though.

~~~
haddr
thanks! looking forward to the expanded version! (i know providing diacritics
is not an easy thing to do...)

------
jdmitch
I love the fact that you've asked people to donate to the International
Justice Mission - they do great work! What made you choose them? Is the font
somehow inspired by the work they do? (maybe you could convince them to
incorporate it into a rebrand ;)!

------
huntaub
What license is this released under?

~~~
haraball
Found in the zip file:

This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
This license is copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at:
[http://scripts.sil.org/OFL](http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)

~~~
huntaub
Ah! Thank you - I should have opened the file first.

------
ChikkaChiChi
Fantastic. I just wish more fonts used a slash zero :(

------
noonespecial
Looks a lot like "Bank Gothic". I almost expect to see it on a refrigerator...
(S M E G)

------
patrickg
Wow, an ASCII font. Useless in most part of the world (sorry for being
dismissive. I actually like the font, but without any "funny" characters, it's
use is very limited) Now, I'll probably get all the downvotes from today...

~~~
pantalaimon
well it doesn't have lowercase either

~~~
OWaz
Lowercase is small caps.

------
elwell
Why did you use images of the font on your demo page (rather than using it as
a web font)?

------
arnley
Very nice looking, thank you!

------
DonPellegrino
I love it. It has that cold war propaganda feel to it. Great for headlines.

------
asimov42
The "R" and "5" are quite interesting, and the symbols look fun, specially
that "@".

------
gondo
is this font legit? it looks like it was build based on some other font, and
there are still original/unchanged characters left. f.e. try to render A, Á
and notice the difference in font-weight and also the char differences. or am
i missing something?

~~~
ars
> it looks like it was build based on some other font, and there are still
> original/unchanged characters left.

There is nothing wrong with doing that. Fonts can't be copyrighted.

The font file itself can (sometimes) be copyrighted as a form of computer
program, but not the font (i.e. the shape).

~~~
gondo
>Fonts can't be copyrighted are you sure? than what are all this online web-
font services like typekit about? are you saying that i can download any font,
edit its metadata, maybe add 1 point to every character and freely use it?

~~~
ars
> than what are all this online web-font services like typekit about?

Good question. They are maintaining the fiction that the font can be
copyrighted and hope that everyone plays along. Keep in mind the font file
itself is copyrighted because font files are actually little computer
programs.

> are you saying that i can download any font, edit its metadata, maybe add 1
> point to every character and freely use it?

Probably not, that's not a sufficient change of the file. What you can do is
display the rendered font on your screen, then exactly copy it using a font
editor. You will loose hinting this way though (the program embedded in the
font to make the hints is copyrighted, the specific hints at each size is
not), so there is some extra work you will need to do to replicate the
hinting.

------
pagekicker
Boxy! Downloaded it to play around, thx.

