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arrowtype / shantell-sans

Shantell Sans, from Shantell Martin, is a marker-style font built for creative expression, typographic play, and animation.
https://shantellsans.com
SIL Open Font License 1.1
386 stars 6 forks source link

Monospace version? #131

Open tynberry opened 6 months ago

tynberry commented 6 months ago

Is there a monospace version? Is it planned?

arrowtype commented 6 months ago

Hey @tynberry, thanks for reaching out! Unfortunately, there is no current monospace version. It's definitely something I've considered making, as it would definitely be cool! But, barring a client commission, there are other priorities on my plate and no current plans here.

Of course, it's an open-licensed project, so anyone could fork it and create their own DIY monospaced version, if they want to.

I'll leave this issue open, just in case I'm able to loop back on it at some point in the future!

jenspets commented 6 months ago

+1 for this request. Monospace fonts are commonly used for programming and other tasks where alignment of character columns between lines are important.

A solution can be to add options for width variance and kerning, and setting these to zero would result in a monospace version? I haven't checked the code, I have only seen the presentation of the fonts with the sliders for various attributes, so I can't tell whether it would be easy to implement, though.

arrowtype commented 6 months ago

Having made a couple of monospace fonts (like Recursive and Name Mono), I can report that it's not particularly simple to add width options to a proportional typeface... some glyphs can be set to a standard width without much issue, but many have to be redrawn to work well.

In this case, the most direct route would be to basically fork the project and make a monospace variant, without the special variable axes of bounce and informality.

arrowtype commented 6 months ago

If you're curious to see parts of the process of making a monospace font from a proportional font, here's a playlist of me doing just that:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG48Y3ERoKzNR6CMRW4RKk8u-9b9vcxsC

jenspets commented 6 months ago

Thanks for the comments and link. As I'm not a font designer, I'm not fully aware of all details of the challenges that go into this. I'll check the playlist.

arrowtype commented 5 months ago

Thanks! Basically, yeah, I would love to do this, but it would be a relatively large project to do well (at least a couple months of full-time work, or many months of occasional work). So, I’d welcome others to do it on their own if they want to try, or I’d be excited if I someday get additional commissioning/sponsorship to expand the type family in this way.