The Process of Creating Print

With my typeface, I knew I didn’t want to recreate a perfect copperplate typeface. My goal was to create type, not necessarily digital calligraphy. I wanted a good level of flow to the typeface, but I didn’t want to hide the fact that it was, in fact, type. This desire is realized in several places — the strictly straight connecting lines, the lack of looping letters (no loops when traditionally there would be in the b d f h k), and changing the forms of some of the letters to be more traditionally typography (r, s, z) and less traditionally copperplate. And similarly for the curves, I didn’t want to have the traditional heavy left side and light right side that would commonly be seen in the o.

In a connected script, those connector lines are important but always thin and minimal in the scheme of a composition. I was interested in the question: could they be thick and firmly present? Could a copperplate typeface have low contrast?

Very early on in the process I tested the feasibility of creating a variable script font that moves between hairline and black, and low and high contrast. The low contrast typeface had a real funky feel to it, and I felt that this could become a full design system.

Eventually I began to treat the different contrasts as optical sizes — the same way we would treat and talk about a more traditional typeface with a contrast axis. The result is the creation of three sub families that span different optical sizes:
Print Script: Highest level of contrast between the strokes, ideal for display
Print Script Slab: The lowest level of contrast
Print Script Text: A balanced middle ground

While working within this variable contrast system, I liked the idea that nothing would move or jump when interpolating between contrast, which would be achievable if the width was kept completely consistent from one side of the axis to another. But as contrast shifts, things change, compress, and expand so it was easier said than done. But in the end I was committed and the widths remain completely consistent from one typeface subfamily to another.

All my typographic explorations and designs up to this point in the process had been with the lowercase. The lowercase is really where we see the script forms thriving — with the connecting strokes, ascenders, and descenders, and all the tricky forms.

I knew with the capital letters that I absolutely wanted to include ‘swash’ or traditional-feeling copperplate caps, but as the default for optimal usability I wanted to have typographic capitals. Like in italic typefaces, the caps that I was envisioning for this project were essentially slanted roman capitals. I started trying to draw them slanted, but designing slanted roman capitals at 32° was not tenable. I quickly realized it would make more sense to design them upright and then slant them and make the necessary optical adjustments in the script. Which led to the realization that I can develop a roman (upright, serif) typeface alongside the script. Once the caps were started, I kept developing the roman and the script in tandem, moving back and forth between them creating letterform shapes and proportions that made sense together and that complemented each other across the two distinct families.

With the core caps done, I began sketching swash ideas for alternate capital letters. By this point, the typeface had developed enough of its own identity that I wasn’t interested in strictly reviving historical models of copperplate capitals. I let sketching guide the process.

I sketched as many ideas for capital letters that my hand could find. After I had a few that I found compelling, I digitized them and started categorizing. I had created enough cool shapes that I was able to sort them into buckets:
Flowy (Swash Caps Set 1)
Technical (Swash Caps Set 2)
Ornamental (Swash Caps Set 3)

Once I had the buckets, I challenged myself to find a swash for each letter in each set, resulting in 4 different options (default + 3 swash styles) for each capital letter and the ampersand.

Another challenge that I found interesting was could this connected script typeface work unconnected? Bear with me, but to make a script typeface work (or at least this one), there are 4 forms for each lowercase letter: initial (no connecting stroke if it’s at the beginning of a word), medial (connecting strokes on both sides), final (no connecting stroke if it’s at the end of a word), and isolated (no connecting strokes on either side). The correct placement of these forms are determined by OpenType feature code.

By turning on the ‘isolated’ OpenType feature, I could easily test what it would look like to see the typeface without the connecting strokes — I didn’t even need to draw anything new. I found it created a really pretty color and overall feel. The main challenge to including this option was the spacing. To accommodate the connecting strokes, the spacing of this typeface was very particular. To be able to type without anything jumping, the spacing needs to be extremely consistent throughout all the forms. So that results in the isolated forms having not optimal spacing for being used as an isolated style. The workaround for this was some pretty intense kerning. But once kerned, the ability to turn off the connecting strokes creates almost an entirely new typeface, built right into Print Script easily available to use by turning on a single parameter.