The Largest difference in Melior, when compared to other Transitional fonts, is its boxy letters and large x-height. As I mentioned in a previous post, Zapf based all the letters off the form of a rectangle. This is easier to see in the capital letters than in the lower case simply because capital forms are more boxy in nature. However, the larger x-height allowed Zapf to reinforce this in the lower case letters by flattening the concave arches in characters such as m, n, c, and u, and leveling the tops and bottoms of applicable characters bowls. These choices were all made in order to easily determine seperate characters when in larger text bodies and they can be seen across the entire font family.
Other than the unifying characteristics brought about by the large x-heiht and rectangular form, Melior's characters do lend themselves to some interesting individual distinctions. For example, the y has a small cut out where its stem meets its descender. Although, this characteristic is seen in other transitional fonts for printing purposes, it is still fairly uncommon.
The ear of the g is also quite interesting because it is squared off at the end instead of rounded into a terminal.
Both the K and k's legs are attached to the setm at the same point as the arm. Many other transitional k's legs, such as Baskervilles, attatch only to the arm.
The center of the w and W has no serif.
The A has a flat apex.
The lowercase a is a two story a in medium and bold, but in italic fonts they are a one story a.
Also differing in font styles the f's stem in italic descends below the baseline.
there is an interesting difference in the p and q's top serifs. The p has the usual flat serif, characteristic of transitional typefaces. But the q simply has a point with no serif.
it is the same case with the d and b.
In the OSF style there are no differences in characters from the medum style except for the numbers, which ascend to the cap height and descend below the baseline.
That's about all that I notice other than the Q's funny tail, but what font family doesnt have a few of those?
No comments:
Post a Comment