CatharsisFonts
commented
4 years ago Hi Michael,
I’m always happy to hear about a print use of Ysabeau, especially of one so complex and typographically challenging as yours!
I definitely agree that a more compact cut would be of great value. I also noticed that Ysabeau’s confident stride, which helps readability in text settings, becomes a downside in headings. I‘m hoping to expand the family to add an x-height axis and a width axis eventually (especially if I were to get Google Fonts funding for it!).
My near-term goals, though, are to finish the Black master in Roman (almost done) and Italics (lots of work), and then possibly to round out the glyph coverage to include things like polytonic Greek and IPA.
I've been looking for something like Ysabeau for a decade. I do love it.
Thanks, that‘s great to hear. 😁
Cheers, Christian
cmahte
Just wanted to say thank you for Ysabeau. I just finished my first real typeset using Ysabeau lined up with EB Garamond.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=16fwqESQ_EYbemv5zgctCGjs-b6y0H6p0
but...
There were some LONG subheadings in this work that forced me to rethink the whole look of the book (like 13 lines of text long the way I originally defined the subheads.) And there's not much out there in the way of tall, narrow fonts that would even begin to blend in. I went with a heavier italic face of Ysabeau so it wasn't so obvious I was squeezing the horizontal, but this only works because this text doesn't use much italic, so you can't see the angle isn't right, with a more advanced typeset (where every body paragraph has 3-10 words italicized, and footnotes have italicized keywords) this cheat won't work. And really, if and when anyone spends much time reading through the subheads, they're going to notice it's squeezed. It's only because these are going to be skipped over most of the time that I did it this way.
So, could you maybe put up a narrow or condensed cut of Ysabeau, (for sale even?) And the same thing for a caption cut for Ysabeau. I have some Bibles with 30-40% footnotes that must be done with a significantly smaller font for annotations, simply increasing the weight doesn't do it completely, I'd need the descenders cropped, and possibly even the ascenders. Both of these cuts would vastly improve the usability of Ysabeau. Currently I don't even try these works with tall fonts, because there's nothing that's close to cutting it. But I believe the whole "put computer shaped text onto paper" thing is wrong... letters like Garamond and Ysabeau are easier to see than letters like Helvetica with no ascender height.
Ok that's all I have to say, I've been looking for something like Ysabeau for a decade. I do love it. You're welcome to close or delete this "issue" once you've read it. :-)