How to draw Germandbls in a script (handwritten) font?

Hi there,

If you could post some good handwritten examples of Germandbls I would be gratefull :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Michał

You mean as in a handwritten cursive script?

Not neccesary cursive. Rather informal script fonts. Like these of Laura Worthington:
IMG_8171

Not sure if it makes much sense to include the capital ẞ for „handwritten“ typefaces! Because it’s unusual to set them all caps and there are no nouns starting with this letter.

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I would agree, then again, it really depends how you intend your typeface to be used. If it’s supposed to be in handwritten style, I personally can only say that, even as a German, I have never written a ẞ in my life, at least not when writing normal text.

In any case, Ulrike Rausch’s fonts come to mind, at least her two newest releases include the ẞ.

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Good point! Thank you. :slight_smile:

If you are serious about doing this, consider making entirely different design for all-caps (using contextual alternates, case feature, whatever). Zapfino Extra has small caps font, and your Laura Worthington example also has a separate caps style. My Tabulamore Script does it too, but within the same font using contextual alternates. I have a standalone ẞ in Tabulamore but do not expect it to be ever seen unlike the small caps variant.

Ah, there might be a misunderstanding going on. Are we talking about Germandbls or germandbls? ẞ or ß?

ẞ is the capital form of ß. ß is used a lot, and a font should definitely include this. ẞ was only recently officially introduced to German typography, you could argue that its use is so rare that a font can live without, but if you do include it, of course make it a visually completely distinct form.

The form(s) Toshi chose in his Tabulamore are a great example of how these forms can be distinguished.

This is how I wrote it in my current expansion of Rollerscript.

That looks very good. Do you have a capital ẞ as well?

Yes:

Given the casual look of the font, to a German speaker it might be apparent, but to an English-only speaker it looks too much like a /B. The top needs to be a bit smaller and drawn more in the manner of the Dresden-style of the letter, which is the most common.

An English only speaker really won’t care, and I doubt it will ever be used anyway.

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It’s good enough for Apple’s text-in-image recognition :wink:

Although it recognized the letter as a lowercase ß amidst capitals.

It think it’s fine, but I would also prefer a flatter top.

I like these renditions of “ẞ ß B b” (picked randomly from many):

Ammer Handwriting from Schriftlabor

Duffy Script by Nick Shinn & Amanda Duffy

SideNote by Jamie Clarke Type

LiebeHeide by Ulrike Rausch

Maku by Kimya Gandhi

For reference, at LucasFonts we have published a long article about the ẞ with numerous examples.

The preferred look is still contested among type designers. My take on this: