In addition, the white inside the 'o' should be utilized when designing the spacing of our font the 'o' sets up the reference rhythm of spaces used between all other glyphs in the font too. These include the b, c, d, e, p, and q, and the form will also implicate the shaping and forms of curves within any other characters of the font, such as the O, C, D, and Q. In general terms, we can also observe that the round form of the 'o' will be echoed in other characters. While the 'o' provides the very basic bowl weight and shape, the white, or counter, provides the size and shape used by the rest of the font. The design of the 'o' is not just a question of the black part of the letter. In the same way as the effect of the underhang has optical impact in a font design, an area of overshoot is needed to provide the illusion of alignment at the x-height and at the cap-height (see below). Without underhang, characters with curves at the baseline will appear to not be sitting correctly within a line of text. This is portion of a character that dips just below the baseline in order to appear sitting on the baseline is called the underhang, an example is seen below. For example, for a curve and a straight edge to look as though they are sitting correctly along a line, the curve must actually sit a little below the line.

One way that optical effects impact type design is in the way that curves and straight edges appear to our eyes. The choice you make about each characteristic should be a deliberate choice. Creating the lowercase 'o' and 'n' characters can provide us with some of the fundamental forms and structures that will underpin all other characters that are needed.Īlthough the design of the 'o' may seem like quite a simple thing, all the characteristics mentioned in the ' What is a font?' chapter come into play. A popular and valuable approach to this is to design the 'o' and 'n' characters first, nailing down essential elements of form, space and balance, before bringing them together for the formation of other characters. It can be helpful to deconstruct the larger processes involved in order to get started quickly, and to provide a solid basis for a whole font's worth of characters. There are many approaches to designing a font.

Fontforge offset baseline