Week 44: Backflip IIII
A quadruple backflip, if you will.
Happy Friday y’all!
This week, I give you the fourth and final version of Backflip! I wanted to squeeze in an italic version before the end of this project. It’s a favorite of mine and apparently yours too, as it continues to be my most downloaded font from this project!
The process was pretty simple. I began by experimenting with the slant tool to find the appropriate italic angle for this style. Next, I used the same tool in Glyphs to tilt all the letters by 12 degrees. Then I worked my way through the alphabet, cleaning up weight and slant issues as I went. Even though they’re all slanted the same amount, some letters need visual adjustments to feel aligned with the rest of the letters. For example, letters like H, T, and I might feel less slanted because they have a long vertical stem.
The second phase of the project was looking at historical typefaces to see how they changed the letter construction in the italic. Caslon and Didot both remove almost all serifs from the italic lowercase. Only keeping them on ascenders/descenders and trading vertical serifs for ball terminals. I did a bit of a hybrid. I didn’t feel like ball terminals were the right call, so I kept the vertical serifs. I added exit strokes where appropriate as well to give it more of a traditional, calligraphic feeling.
In the end, I am glad I worked on the light style. It’s fun to have both the light and light italic (for once). I love the versatility of Backflip and it’s definitely one that will be released ~for real~ in the future. Thanks for reading!!
5 Things I’m Into This Week:
Making fancy stovetop popcorn. Recently, I’ve been making it with butter, chili crisp, salt, paprika, garlic powder, and nutritional yeast. Holy mackerel it’s good!!!
The song, She Brings The Rain by CAN. Nice to bob your head to while working.
I started the podcast, Through The Cracks, this week. It’s a long form podcast covering the disappearance of Relisha Rudd. It’s great!
The weirdly therapeutic practice of rearranging my plants to prepare them for the bright summer months.
Continuing to get a lot out of putting silly little outfits together everyday.
Have a great weekend!
Libbie
Hey there! It says that this is the final version. What about the other weights? Aren't they going to be there?