VON NEUHAUS — Geometric “Bauhaus”-inspired style
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This is the latest evolution of a “Bauhaus”-inspired constructivist style typeface design that originally started 5 years, or two font versions back.
To me personally this is a long awaited triumph, that has finally materialized after years worth of been haunted by this idea, and the crazy speculations about this ghost that would never be...
Well, that was untill now... So at last, I can now finally proudly present to you this latest of arrivals to come from this unforeseen series of typeface progressions.
This newborn addition is in fact the 3rd phase of this letter concept's evolution, and caused the font project to undergo a series of addaptations that graduatelly increasing the levels of sophistication possible by chaging it's internal structure and behaviour within the FontStruct-editor. This 3rd addaptation unlocks the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” full power potential.
Enabling all editor functionallity to provide the most versatile font creation capabilities available within FontStruct.
STF_BLAUHAUS was the font's very first version, created back in early 2019. It's the font's original concept as it innitially was first intended. It essentially started out as a personal study into the design of letters on a small grid. And more importantly, the creation of required composite bricks to do so.
The idea back then was to craft the most complex geometry possible without the use of any “Expert Mode” functionality whatsoever. Now, what this innitially did was still quite novel to me at that time, as this had led to the development of a FontStruction that was solely built from the extensive use of composite bricks. Not just a couple, but a staggering 272 composite bricks in total. Many of which in fact are quite intuitive and required certain amounts of careful thinkering with the maths found in it's geomtry to craft these custom brick compositions.
So as explained above, there was no use of any of FontStruct's “Expert Mode” functions. This meant that the option to nudge, flip or rotate any of the bricks wasn't available. Now this changes everything in respect to building complex fonts, since in order to get all the bits and pieces of a letter such as: crossbars, intersections, curves and corners properly aligned requires, a precisly fitting composite brick to be tailor-made. In terms of the FontStruct limitations, this cause the physical properties of FontStruct's brick composition tool to be fundamental as to how much complexity and refinement can be put into it's letter geometry. In other words this is fundamental as to how well crafted the design is going to look in the end, since there is no option to further manicure shape or form other than from within those bounds of the adjacent 16-brick-array grid squares of a selection for composition.
I've choosen to design the alphabet concept in this “Bauhaus”-inspired geometric style, simply because of the simplicity this style has in terms of its basic pure geometric forms. The final result became this simple and bold looking small grif display type with a “3-bricks” Em-size only.
but it had some crucial compromises that had to be made due to FontStruct's design limitations. Not terrible, but not quite perfect either.
One very important byproduct from this limitations as were described above was a huge collection of very intuitive custom brick compositions that offer seemless alignement and perfect fits, basically an extensive set of custom bricks that work in a very similar fashion as FontStruct's default “Connect” bricks.
Bringing us to the main reason for 2022's version of this font.
STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus) was the font's second version, and most recent state that it sat in for the last year, up till this now. In this 2022 version of the of this font design modification the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” functionality was introduced into the design. Hoping to further manicure some of these compromised critical area's in an attempt to see what refinements could be implemented to revise the 2019's original version.
Now that the option to nudge, flip or rotate bricks was available, new more complex geometric shapes suddenly became possible. This sparked an explosion of new characters and additional alternative forms. Although now the FontStruct editor got vastly more versatile and potent, it remained strongly limited by that still present 1:1 brick size filter setting. Nevertheless, this made possible a very substantial update of the older font, and allowed many new shaping capabilities.
STF_VON NEUHAUS is the 3rd and final evolition to have come from my earlier FontStruct endeavours; STF_BLAUHAUS and STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus)
This version basically saw the transition from a font only using 1:1 brick size filter into a font at 2:2 brick size filter settings to unlock all power potential of the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” functions.
I could now write another eqyually as long body of text, explaining what's new in this final version or which other improvements were made, or say about it whatever the hell I want, but I figure that the picture becomes even more apparent when simply comparing the 3 fonts from old to new, and see the evolution happening before your eyes.
Start with STF_BLAUHAUS, folowed by STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus), and witness the full glory of "next-level" FontStructing that made possible the last version STF_VON NEUHAUS.
I hope you like it,
Cheers
This is a clone of STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus)A little experiment with the "connect" bricks (and an healty dose of stacking). I wasn't referencing any specific example of the style (of which there are many), but I'm sure that, looking for solutions as I went, I ended up with something similar to already existing typefaces (and fontstructions).
Unfortunately, some connecting bricks don't align exactly, so I had to resort to approximate them, when possible, with more stacking, which didn't particularly help the already lacking consistency in construction.
But enough moaning, enjoy!
A logotype for retro-tech hardware inspired by Roc Mitchell's Corporate phototype series (aka Limited/Limited View and Logos/LogoStyle) from the 1970's. Free for personal use only. Alternate characters list: @ - P * - J # - L < - A > - t ^ - e { - F } - R ~ - K © - g ® - D § - S ¤ - E ‹ - A › - A ¹ - A ¼ - 4 ½ - m ¾ - w ² - V ³ - V ª - a « - p » - q † - f