Hi, I’m new to Glyphs and type design in general. Therefore, forgive me if I ask a question that may seem trivial and obvious to you.
I’m creating a font, but I have a doubt. After creating the two master axes for the weight, I was wondering if for the italics I have to work on a separate file, or can I create the masters for the italics in the same file.
It’s true that if I use the same file, I can’t differentiate the style of some characters (eg the a), so my idea is that I have to work on a different file for my italic.
Thanks for a clarification.
Welcome!
Yes, it is advised that you separate the italic if your lowercase designs change (typically a, g, etc.). The problem of putting everything in one place in such a case is something called group kerning; you want VO and VC (and VG VÖ VÇ…) to be kerned by the same value but wouldn’t want to do all that individually by hand. Instead, you give the round letters a kerning group name (on the left side of the glyphs in this case) and kern against the group. That is group kerning, and the group setting is shared across all masters.
And ‘all masters’ is the tricky part, since your lowercase a may as well belong to [o c e] group on the left, thus needing different a group structure.
If you think this doesn’t apply to the style you’re making, you can have everything in one place.
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Since I’m going to change the styling of the a and g, that’s the same conclusion I came to. You confirmed. Thank you so much for the clarification and thanks for the welcome.
You can change a and g and still work within one file, just keep them as separate glyphs and switch shapes. I think oblique/slanted design is easier to keep within one file to keep track of everything, and go separate for cursive/italic where design differs more and switching shapes becomes unreasonable.
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That’s a good point. I can see it can work depending if the amount of switching necessary is low.
Thanks for the tip, but I still don’t know how to keep the glyphs “separate”. As for the change of shape (suggested link), I had already read about it, but it seems to me that it refers to the transition from regular to bold, and therefore to weight.
You can swap glyphs on export using Rename Glyphs and Remove Glyphs custom parameters. This way, you make italic forms as separate glyphs (let’s say a.ita), and put them back automatically. The down side is that those alternate forms will always be alternates while designing the font, making the design process cumbersome. I think it’s a neat hack that allows for single-file source if you really want to and know how, but I think it’s more conventional to simply have a separate file.
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Well, it’s basically designing a style set and then auto swapping it on export, isn’t it? Syncing changes between two files seems harder to me
Weight is just a common example, but you can apply it to any other axis. I would just design single story alternatives as a style set (add glyphs called a.ss01 and g.ss01) in both upright and italic and use Rename Glyphs in static instances and conditions in variable font. You can then decide if you want to offer a manual switch between these alts through a style set or remove that feature.
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It is, and it’s going to be really tedious. Imagine your italic a being always treated as an alternate and cannot be typed from the keyboard. It’s not just a and g but can be a lot more (i, u, v can be in the same left kerning group depending on the style, and will all going to be alternates). I can imagine it’s going to be really frustrating depending on the amount of difference.
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Totally! Only works for simple swaps and bigger changes require separating the file (unfortunately, in my view).
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Thank you for the clarifications, but I’m new to Glyphs and therefore, for now, I’ll stick to the simplest way: work on separate files, also because I’ll differentiate several things, and I don’t want to mess up too much, risking doing damage that will force me to reset all at stake.
But I’ll be here to ask for further clarification. I’m sure.
If you don’t plan to interpolate between the upright and the italic, You can just draw the shapes intended for each in its masters. So you draw a two story “a” in the upright and the single story in the italic masters. You can add an “Enforce Compatibility Check” custom parameter and uncheck the checkbox to get rid of the red warnings.
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What about kerning groups?
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You are right. If the shapes require different kerning groups, alternate glyphs are better.
I was just wondering where the heck the compatibility check gets disabled, at least in these cases.
Oh, that’s true too. My cursive a for example is very similar to an o, while the regular straight one is more squared off. So for the italic one I’m now using the “o” kerning group, while for the straight one, the “a” kerning group.
It would be great to have something like master grouping, which would allow independent kerning classes and master compatibility between such groups. (Probably features too, but that’s at least doable with custom parameters). That way italics or other incompatible masters could all live within one file.
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Add a custom parameter to Font Info > Font, it’s called Enforce Compatibility Check. Uncheck the box.