Wednesday, April 24, 2013

95 Friendly Roman

As a break from the rigors of classical Roman capitals, I recently offered my students in Hanoi* this Friendly Roman, a version with its rules relaxed.  For the calligrapher, it's much more fun and forgiving; for the reader, it's softer, friendlier, warmer, and more immediate.
Keep the basics of Roman capitals but moderate them: 

  • While you should still distinguish between the differing widths of letter families, you can make the narrow ones a little wider and the wide ones a little narrower.  
  • Make the letters 6 pen widths tall, not 8.  
  • Let a curved serif appear on vertical strokes.  Not too curved nor too large! And not in corners where the strokes join.  
  • Round the lower corners and separate the overlapped strokes at upper corners [example: D and B]   
  • You'll still want to turn your 20° pen angle to 45° for the diagonal letters, but keep those joins simple and don't let it slow you down too much. 

I love this simplified Roman and hope you will too.  I've named it after my long-suffering husband, David Friend.   

*They have a lively Facebook page at "Learn Calligraphy"

1 comment:

  1. I love this font, is there a place where I can purchase it to work on a computer?
    imtswhite@att.net

    ReplyDelete