Type journey

This from Liron Lavi Turkenich:

I will share a bit of the frustration and the fussiness included in the process of designing a specific letter or glyph. The process involves a lot of observing: looking at other typefaces, checking what was done. Expanding also to typefaces that are not in the same category as the one we’re designing, perhaps some interesting feature will be relevant. The observation part does not end while moving to the actual design, it is a back and forth process. But while starting to design, we are experimenting. How far can we go? How interesting can we make this glyph without making it a joke? Can our typeface’s style carry bravely the new feature? And after being so brave (and for some people before) we start relaxing, refining and finding a proper balance.

Some glyphs are coming more naturally. They may fit easily to the typeface’s style or they are just simple enough (although those so-called simple ones are causing the most challenges). But others, are just a nerve wracking. 

But let’s discuss the letter we gathered here for: the letter g!

At first, I designed the ‘g’ you see on the left. Funny how a letter can be so human — I got a comment that it looks sad — and I couldn't agree more! I changed the ‘ear’. Later on you can see another change. (I didn’t include here all the steps of the design, just some key ones)

Some tryouts to make the ‘g’ more harmonised with my typeface. I have short ascenders and descenders and large counters — I needed something more open, so the letter wouldn’t look cramped. 

This is how the ‘g’ looked after the changes. Not too amazing, but okay. Then, I got a feedback from Gerry Leonidas that the 'g' looks too generic and could fit any typeface. I cannot talk enough about the importance of feedback. When you are so into what you are doing, it is essential to ask other people for their opinion.

More finer adjustments: first change is adding more weight, so it would work with the other characters of the type.

I was quite happy with it, but after Gerard Unger’s feedback, I made some more changes. I already mentioned how changing the g’s ‘ear’ can create a whole different feeling, here are other attempts for it — sometimes it looks happy, and sometimes more serious.

So for now, and it might still change — this is my g!

Children’s reading and the small letter g

This, from Sue Walker:

These small-letter ‘g’s are taken from some early twentieth-century handwriting manuals used for teaching print script, which was very popular with teachers at the time.

Some teachers thought that children would find it easier to read if such letterforms were used in children’s reading books, and as a result handwritten forms were used for the text in some reading books. Many such books were written and produced by teachers using the same letterforms as they used for teaching handwriting.

Detail from L. M. Sidnell and A. M. Gibbon, Little ones’ own picture reader,
‘Blackie’s Coloured Manuscript-Writing Infant Readers’, London and Glasgow: Blackie, 1924

Detail from My first reading book, ‘The Seandar Individual Reading Books’, Leeds: E. J. Arnold, 1929

Most publishers of children reading books, however, used traditional typefaces, but several began to acknowledge a link with handwriting through the use of a single storey g and a, which became known as ‘infant characters’. To begin with many were badly rendered, often resulting in an uncomfortable fit with the other letters.

Detail from S.N.D. [Rose Meeres] Book IIA, ‘The songs the letters sing’, London: Grant Educational Company, circa 1920.

Detail from Simplified print-writing primer, Gibson’s print-writing primers, Glasgow: Robert Gibson & Sons, circa 1922

A rather good-looking small-letter g was drawn by Eric Gill at the request of a teacher, Augusta Monteith, initially for a children’s poetry book. The pink book of verse was first published in 1931, and reprinted as First poetry book in 1934.

Probably as a result of the alternative g (and a), Gill Sans was used in many children’s reading books until the 1960s. Many teachers continue to think that infant characters should be used in books for beginner readers. But, in some typefaces, such as Helvetica and Avant Garde Gothic, the o, a and g can be perceived as very similar and this can lead to confusion.

What do children think? In recent classroom research most children I spoke with were aware of different forms of small letter g. Some even made the point that single storey g's are for writing and double-storey g's are what we read. While those that thought double-storey small-letter g's (and a’s) were 'harder' than single-storey ones, this did not affect their reading performance. What was more significant was the way typefaces are used: the space between letters, words and lines. See about the project here.

What was very important for young readers was the ‘look and feel’ of a typeface. My typeface, Fabula, designed originally as a screen font for interactive multi-lingual story books for children, was designed to have an informal ‘feel’. It has a cursive small-letter g that has been carefully designed so that it is not easily confused with other characters; the double-storey ‘a’ and clear distinction between other confusable characters also helps. In testing, Fabula has been described by children as: ‘clear, so you can see it properly’; ‘normal'; ‘like an ordinary book’.

From G to g: the need for speed

The ‘need for speed’ is one reason for the emergent minuscule letter g from its Trajan parent. The changes in letterforms evolve from a gradual reduction in the number of times the pen leaves the paper, and a tendency to incline the letters as they flow into one another.

Eric Gill’s evolution of the small letter g. Gill, 1931.

Bigelow calls the path of the mark-making tool, the ductus. In the majescule writing of the first century, the G ductus was largely invisible; that is, many more movements were made without the pen being in contact with paper. Contrast this with the ductus of a g written in fifteenth century chancery cursive. It has been economised to such an extent, that a high proportion of the movements of the pen are mark-making.

Illustration redrawn with modifications from Bigelow and Day, 1982

The minuscule hand was not only the result of an economising of pen-movements. It was the result of the influence cursive hands had on formal hands, and vice-versa. At any one time, in the evolution of writing, there is a wide range of styles in existence, varying from the most formal, careful calligraphy to quick notes. (Sometimes quickly scribbled forms accompany a formally written text on the same page of the manuscript). The quicker more cursive notes inevitably influenced the majuscule forms; in turn the scribbled letters re-made by the scribes’ broad nib became a formal hand in its own right,

Roman letter development began with a skeleton alphabet and then occurs on the one hand, a formal characterisation of this alphabet influenced and largely produced by the broad-nibbed pen, and, on the other hand, a less formal characterisation resulting from the scribbling of the educated public: this development, at first controlled by the tool and material – the stylus and wax tablets of the public – was mastered by them, the scribblers, and became an economic development, simplified strokes and linkings or loopings, saving both time and space. The craftsmen in their turn, borrowing the more economic skeleton forms characterised them afresh by means of the broad nib. Johnston, 1913. 

Taking shape

Perhaps because the letter G was a latecomer to the alphabet — all the other letterforms were firmly fixed by 8BC — the G remained an amorphous character. Formal inscriptions aside, there were many ‘acceptable’ letter G variants, often within the same carving or manuscript: variously named the the ‘square G’ (the classic ‘Trajan’ form), the ‘involute G’ (the final swing curls in on itself in a spiral), the ‘bearded G’ (the final swing terminates in a curve underneath the letter) and, a rare and curious C/G ‘offspring’ form. More of that later.

G variants in early roman letterforms, as redrawn by David Jones, lettering artist, 1895-1974. David Jones and the Art of Lettering, Nicolete Gray, Motif No 7, 1961.

In at No.7

The new G moved into seventh place in the alphabet, displacing the Z, for which there was no need. The Z was later resurrected at the end of the alphabet. In formal roman inscriptions, it most often looked like this Imperial Majescule G, first painted by a signwriter onto the stone, then carved with a hammer and chisel. Here, Father Catich’s imagined brushstroke G next to his redrawn Trajan G from The origin of the serif, 1968.

Finding its tail

Our story starts with the Latin g sound and its translation into an alphabetic symbol c7BC. At that time there appears to be no distinction between the sounds k (hard c) and g. Both sounds were represented by the letter C, which according to the context could be read as C or G (look at the many inscriptions devoted to the Emporer Gaius or Caius along the Appian Way in Rome). The important development comes comes in 312 BC: a new sign was created by the addition of an accent to the lower end of C, converting it to a G.
Here, at Ostia, Italy: some surviving mosaic lettering, from 1/2BC. I found all these accented Cs in the same inscription.