Sorry, I misunderstood your answer. 
Going from a âwhat bothers me the most when the fonts Iâm using donât have itâ anglet, itâs gotta be character coverage. Most other features listed there are things that I can get around easily enough with character style options, but trying to fill in a character that doesnât exist within a typeface is way more annoying. In the easiest cases, Iâve had to change the baseline on a comma or apostrophe to fake it as the other, which still requires that one character to have different settings than all itâs neighbors. More commonly, thereâs a character that needs to have an accent, and Iâll have to stitch two characters together to fake that; but the worst are when the client wants a special character like an ampersand and the font just doesnât have it, because then either I have to find a substitute font for that single character, try to personally create one to match the style, or tell the client the font they want wonât work with that character, and they need to pick either a different font or a different way to represent what theyâre going for in their writing.
I will give that a font that was built with itâs own bold/italic variation is going to look a lot nicer than one Iâve dropped a stroke or shear on to fake the same style, for sure, and having to adjust the kerning and tracking is an annoying timesink, but Iâd take having to work around all of that over the headache I get when someone asks for a lowercase letter in a font where all characters are uppercaseâŠ
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Iâm a regular visitor to the TypeDrawers forum too, but my posts there are somewhat infrequent. If Iâm not mixing you up with someone else, Iâm the one there who referred you to this forum when you asked about finding a graphic design forum.
My involvement with type design goes back to the 1980s. Itâs been an after-hours thing in addition to my full-time job as a graphic designer and art director.
Iâve thought a good deal about the larger question youâve asked over the years. By reading through the TypeDrawers posts from other type designers, one might conclude that technical considerations, extended character sets, and OpenType features are of utmost importance.
There are certainly many exceptions, but most graphic designers Iâve worked with over the years have only a passing familiarity with these things. Iâve never taken a poll, but many (most) graphic designers (especially beginners), I think, donât even know what OpenType features, hinting, or Unicode are. If theyâve accessed the OpenType palettes in the Adobe apps, whatâs there is so cryptic and inconsistent from one font to the next that most designers donât bother to check.
Discretionary, contextual, or automatic ligatures â no clue, Automatic fractions â never knew such a thing was possible. Oldstyle, tabular, or proportional figures in one font â whatâs the difference between them? Localized country-specific exceptions â huh?
I think this, um, ignorance might be more widespread in English-speaking countries where thereâs less of a need to access glyphs from different alphabets. For example, a Serbian designer will check the Cyrillic to see if it has local features to accommodate the glyph design differences from standard Russian Cyrillic, but for designers in the U.S., these technicalities are irrelevant.
Similarly, most type designers donât understand what graphic designers care most about. Type designers who started as graphic designers tend to approach typeface design from a very different perspective that caters to the concerns of graphic designers. Iâve read plenty of comments on TypeDrawers from well-respected type designers who burn through creating their kerning pairs in two or three hours, not fully realizing that out-of-the-box kerning is one thing that their type-buying customers care a great deal about.
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I have now left the TypeDrawers forum.
And what graphic designers really want from a font is what I am trying to find out.
I think my kerning was pretty good already but for subsequent font I will try to give it more attention.
The coverage of my fonts is certainly adequate for most graphic designs and includes all the characters mentioned by Kaegro.
The thing that sways me the most into buying is the previews, where you can see samples of how the font could be used in a simple design. Iâm very much an impulse buyer.
Price is also a influence. If the font is too far out there and I anticipate Iâll only use it once, then I factor the pricing and if itâs really worth it.
Coverage is important, but Iâve only ever had a need for English and Spanish. Equally important to me is a decent family of different weights.
My fonts are all free so I have never really spent much time on advertising. I only ever did two promotional images and it was a lot of work so I didnât bother much after that.
Perhaps I ought to do one for Bainsley because it is at least as good as Munson and Cadman, just different.
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IMO, too much information, not enough inspiration. I look at the previews on Letterhead Fonts, and thatâs the type of presentation that always sucks me in as a buyer. I donât have the patience to read about features, I want to see applications. My entire life is spent processing images, thatâs how you would get through to me as a buyer. Donât tell me, show me. I think most graphic designers think like that. Weâre visual first, textual second.
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@PJMiller, Mojo got right to the heart of what I was obliquely getting at. When it comes to typography, most graphic designers are largely concerned with how this or that typeface will look in whatever project or layout theyâre working on.
Before downloading or buying, theyâll see if it comes in a good selection of weights and, maybe, italics. Theyâll notice kerning sloppiness too. If theyâre from non-English-speaking countries, theyâll check whether or not the typeface contains the needed language-specific glyphs and diacritics.
Obscure glyphs from the far-off corners of Unicode are all but irrelevant since theyâll likely never be used. Variable type, math symbols, dingbats, do-dads, stylistic sets, alternate glyphs, and OpenType features donât typically enter into the decision. Of course, thereâs the rare situation where someone is looking for precisely these things, but thatâs the exception.
I probably sell 95% of my fonts as one-off purchases to individuals or agencies of one weight within the larger family. Since my primary job is that of a graphic designer, I understand how these one-off purchases are made; theyâre basically impulse buys made because that one weight or width in that one type family met the needs of someoneâs specific project.
If I remember right, you focus on free-to-use fonts, so the dynamics might be different since money doesnât get in the way of downloading everything instead of only one weight. Even so, I suspect the decision to download most free fonts is typically made based on how the type looks and its presentation â not its list of features or how big its character set might be.
All that said, maybe your fonts fill a niche for those people looking for the very things youâve included in your fonts that 99% of other fonts lack. Cadman, for example, contains over 2,500 glyphs â itâs gigantic and could be spot-on for some jobs because of it.
My intent with the advert panels was to show the font in several different sizes and to show the italics, small caps and a wide selection of different characters. I guess I overloaded it a bit.
I will bear this in mind and maybe prepare some lees wordy examples.
Cadman contains a lot of glyphs because as well as the normal coverage it also contains the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (Unicode block) for all the Inuit languages.
If it helps, I can try to break down how I look for fonts into two steps:
First, is it the right tool for the job? Using your two as examples, if I were looking for a font to set type for a math textbook, Cadman would be the better contender - it has all kinds of advanced glyphs, and the attention to detail for Dyslexia would definitely help when reading complex equations. But if I were setting type for a storefront sign, Munson would be the better choice because of itâs formality and weight - Cadman looks a little childish in comparison. Similarly, if I were making a banner for a kids birthday, Iâd probably keep looking for something more decorative, and if I needed a character that wasnât in that font, then Iâd keep looking, too. You could call this a qualification round, I suppose: If I need a hammer, Iâm not going to stop and look at a saw.
Second is when the styles and features would get looked at if I had multiple contenders and I could only pick one - because I can adjust or work around things like tracking/kerning and styles, theyâre not qualifiers in the same way, but when these things are done by the font designer they have the advantage of saving me the time in fiddling with it, and they usually look a lot better when theyâre made right, rather than me having to fix them. If I had to rank the individual characteristics, Iâd put weights and styles above the others, simply because those are usually the most problematic ones to work around - itâs pretty easy to tell a faked bold or italic from the real thing because the characters are distorted.
This all ultimately boils down to âdoes it look rightâ and âhow much extra effort is it going to take to make this look good?â The first one is pretty contextual, but the second is a matter of attention to detail.
Putting fewer words on the poster goes against the grain somewhat. But on the other hand I suppose all that is necessary is enough characters to give a feel of what are getting. But it feels as though I am not giving enough information.
This shows you the look of the font but it doesnât give any information about the open type features and language coverage.
I think youâre now headed in a better general direction, though I donât know if that background helps for this particular font.
Youâre making the fonts available on the free fonts sites, I guess my next question would be, how many advert panels do they let you have? Can you have multiple?
On the commercial font sites, itâs usually multiple, and the foundries make use of the panels to show the extent of whatâs possible. For instance, on fonts.com, the multiple panels for Georgia, Heading Now, give an idea of whatâs in the font set as well as possible uses.
I wouldnât normally use my own work as an example, but this is typical of my promotional images on the commercial sites where I sell my fonts.
Like most graphic design, identifying the target audience is a crucial step before designing something to resonate with that audience. If youâre targeting a group thatâs looking for a large character set, you want to stress that. On the other hand, when targeting graphic designers needing a specific look for a project, the equation is a little different and will likely be driven as much by emotional appeal as it is more practical concerns.
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Nice presentation. Poking around on myfonts⊠all your fonts your sweet. Trying⊠hard⊠not⊠to⊠impulse⊠buy⊠everythingâŠ
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Well, there were no more votes so I closed the poll.
I guess having a large family of weights and having an adequate coverage is the answer.
The aesthetics of the font is both very important and very unimportant. When I design a font I have an idea of what I want it to look like and I try to stay true to that idea whilst at the same time letting it develop into what it wants to be. I know this sounds crazy but sometimes a font takes on a life of itâs own and pulls the design in a certain direction, it is difficult to explain but some of the best projects come out of this.
For the person choosing (or not) the font the aesthetics are either right for them or not. I have no way of knowing what the potential user wants so I design it the way I want it to be. Unless I get feedback on what the users want or I have a specific remit to fulfill.
As a side note the projects where someone else is calling the shots are the worst projects I have had to work on and as I am not getting paid for any of this I tend to avoid them like the plague.
So I guess my next project will have a greater family of weights, not just the regular and bold. The coverage will be just as comprehensive as always.
I think the poll sample wasnât large enough to draw that conclusion, and having to choose between aesthetics and weights likely distorted the importance of each. If you had rephrased to question to say, âthe right look or personality for the jobâ instead of âaesthetics,â I think the responses would have been different.
Aesthetics can mean several different things to different people. A typeface can be aesthetically interesting and well-designed, but if those aesthetic qualities are inappropriate for the job at hand, a designer wonât choose it. No one will pick a typeface that doesnât have the personality or look they need, despite the number of available font weights.
For example, when a designer needs a modern-looking, geometric typeface for a corporate client, they wonât choose an aesthetically elegant script face just because it comes in more weights. On the other hand, there are many contemporary geometric faces to choose from, so the deciding factor between one and the other could be that one comes in ten different weights while the other only comes in four.
Thatâs true, but it is possible to know which general type styles are most popular and what kinds of typefaces or font qualities are needed to fill new niches. Monotypeâs yearly Type Trends book, for example, provides much information on what people are buying.
Really the aesthetics should not have been part of the survey at all. The original question was âGiven two fonts which are both equally suitable for a project how would you choose between them ?â
I see now that I should not have included the option about aesthetics in the possible answers, I just wanted to know if coverage was a deciding factor or if having lots of clever open type features was a big influence on peoples decision or if lots of weights was the thing that attracted people, things like that.
To me the aesthetics is the way it looks, the visual attractiveness, including itâs style and character.
In general when I design a typeface I design it for myself, the way I want it to look, then I release it just because someone else might find it useful. This survey was to try and find out what more people find useful.
The book is interesting and I will give it a read. Thanks.
I donât think I explained what I was getting at well enough.
For me, and I think for most, the right aesthetic qualities are always paramount when choosing a typeface for a project, but what is aesthetically appropriate in one instance might not be for the next.
For example, Franklin Gothic is an aesthetically appealing typeface for a newspaper headline, but maybe not as much for a formal wedding invitation. Type designers tend to think in terms of making aesthetically pleasing fonts. Graphic designers, on the other hand, think more along the lines of how this or that font can be used to help create something else.
My point was that you, a type designer, might be asking about a fontâs inherent aesthetics, but a graphic designer might be more inclined to interpret the question in terms of the appropriateness of this or that typeface for the project at hand.
Iâm sorry for misinterpreting.
I would always classify the aesthetics of something and itâs suitability for a particular purpose differently, after all an orchid can be very beautiful but if it is in a field of potatoes it is a weed.
I am not trying to correct you, what you said is completely correct, I suppose the way something looks depends on where you stand to look at it.