Hi, I am thinking about a display typeface. The thing is that I want to make each letter connection different, ex. AA, AB AC AD… That would require designing 676 ligature glyphs (26x26), but in that case only every second pair of letters would be connected to each other. I could make that by setting kerning for example GU and UR glyphs in a way that the middle letters U would exactly overlap so user would have to type every letter twice to create a text properly. Ex. we want to create a text ‘ORANGE’ so we have to type ‘ORRAANNGGE’ so the program sees it as ligature glyphs OR-RA-AN-NG-GE. Is it technically possible to make it a little more user-friendly and less complicated?
The ligatures are not going to work. What you can try is to draw three variants for each glyph. One that connects only to the next, one that connects to both sides and one that connects to the previous glyph. There is a tutorial that explains needed OpenType code.
Thanks for replying. So as I understand it is impossible to make every letter connection different. For example e-l and e-h even if they could be the same?
You can have variations for each glyph. And combine it with some ligatures. If you plan that carefully you get a very similar effect
I am making such a typeface using contextual alternates overlapping each other (so they appear ligated), but this requires A LOT of alternates. Still a smaller number than ligatures, but there are so many things you have to watch out for. H has about 4 alternates already and T has 10, and I haven’t made diacritical ones yet.