Stefano Daelli

Making Rig Sans, Part 3

I enjoy designing the diacritical marks that ensure a typeface can do its job in other languages. The challenge is to draw accents and marks that work seamlessly with the overall design while respecting local traditions and preferences.

Not being a native reader in every language that my fonts are used in, I spend time digging around to try and learn more each time I approach them. It’s a constant learning process. There are some great resources online including talks, visual examples, drawing guides and essays, though they are spread across the web. Some of the advice seems pretty definitive but when seeing these marks in the real world they can contradict everything you thought you knew.

Some resources I often refer to, listed by Florian Hardwig

The Diacritics Project: diacritics.typo.cz

Ondrej Jób: Context of Diacritics

David Březina: On diacritics

Adam Twardoch: Polish Diacritics: how to?

Victor Gaultney: Problems of diacritic design for Latin script text faces

Agnieszka Małecka & Zofia Oslislo (ed.): The Insects Project. Problems of Diacritic Design for Central European Languages

Ondrej Jób: Context of Diacritics

Radek Sidun: Diacritics of world’s languages

Aleksandra Samuļenkova: Diacritics as a Means of Self-Identification, ATypI 2016 (video, about Latvian diacritics)

David Jonathan Ross: How *not* to draw accents, ATypI 2017 (video)

WE’VE HIT PEAK 2019….

You know we’ve peaked as a society when we have Llama’s twerking that booty. But there’s no denying that this is one of the funniest things I’ve seen this year. Santa you listening? I want a Booty Shaking Llama under the tree this year!