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xconsau / KumbhSans

SIL Open Font License 1.1
68 stars 1 forks source link

Great Font! (but kern issue in light) #5

Open Myndex opened 3 years ago

Myndex commented 3 years ago

First, I just came across this font on Google Fonts, and I want to say thank you for sharing, this is a really good font, nice kerning for regular and bold, nice glyphs — I can tell you really took time and effort developing this and I want you to know it is well appreciated.

It has much of the "feel" that I like in Futura, but Futura is not particularly useable, whereas I am finding KumbhSans to be very useable.

Kerning Issue

The light version seems to be missing the kerning table, which the others have. Particularly evident in some all-caps pairings such as AT and PA ... also the tracking in the light font is wider than the normal font (which I happen to like in some ways but not sure if it was intentional).

Next Versions...

I'd love it if there were a 500 and or 600 weight version.

I might be able to help contribute once I'm done with some current projects.

Thank you,

Andy

xconsau commented 3 years ago

Hello Andy,

Thank you for the valuable feedback and appreciating the font. I'm glad you liked it. The light version has kerning pairs missing for many uppercase letters. I will fix this in the next update. The kerning was kept slightly loose for the light version intentionally. I will re-look this and will fine tune it to slightly tighter one.

For the variants 500 and 600, I would like to make these or convert the font into variable one. I will look into this too. Thanks once again for closely looking into the font and giving feedback.

Kind regards, Saurabh Sharma

Myndex commented 3 years ago

Hello Saurabh @xconsau,

As I said I like the slightly looser tracking, it's just the consistency of the kerning pairs that's the concern, in large part as a font like this is very good for display, which often calls for all uppercase (which is how I was testing it and saw the issue). The A when paired with a T either before or after, or a P before, and the Y were the ones that leapt out at me. They were examined at 48px so pixel interpolation is probably not a factor.

VARIANTS: A font like this should do well as a variable font, at least for the weight axis.

Side note unrelated to your font: I'm glad to see variable fonts becoming a thing again.

I'm hoping to see more variable fonts using an aspect ratio axis, and maybe an x-height axis or even an ascender/descender axis. These all would be so helpful when using a font for columns of body text vs display.

FWIW, I do a lot of work in accessible readability research —  increased letter spacing can help improve fluent readability (whole word recognition). I'm thinking variable fonts adding an axis for tracking and one for leading would be better than the somewhat clumsy CSS letter-spacing and line-height properties.

xconsau commented 3 years ago

Hello Andy,

The light variant has been updated with more kerning pairs. I have added new pairs and also adjusted existing ones. The font is yet to be updated on the main Google Fonts Library. A ticket is already been submitted previously. https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2759 . You can download ttf file from the fonts folder and generate the webfont if required.

FWIW, I do a lot of work in accessible readability research

Glad to know that. Accessibility is more important than just a beautiful design. I am no expert in that area but I implemented a small concept that a Cap Height to X-Height ratio of around 67% to 70% is most comfortable in reading. A variable font with aspect ratio axis would be interesting.