I’ve been focusing on releasing my latest typeface, a children’s book typeface; which I hope will be released via the Monotype channel very soon. Its reason for being (as everything needs a reason) is to produce a children’s book without the hassle of all the complicated font licensing.
We found Plantin Infant was a good starting point but there were a few changes to bring it up to our own standards.
The first draft was fairly quick to complete but it did involve redrawing each letter in Glyphs Mini. We didn’t even complete every letter as this was enough to complete the book and get it printed through Amazon.
That should have been enough but then I discovered variable fonts and how the same font could change widths; and, of course, I had to start experimenting with this in a demo version of Glyphs App.
Upgrade time!
At this point I’m invested and have to upgrade from mini to the full version of Glyphs (and that now officially makes me a type designer).
The current version of the typeface has five weights. There are three masters as I wanted control over the main weight ‘book’ and a thin version that works great as a display font and can be used bigger in compliment to the regular weight; which I’ve called ‘book’ which makes sense for a font to be used to create a book.
Update 5th May 2022
I’ve just had confirmation that this font has been accepted by the Monotype library, so watch out for the link when it becomes available.
An easy-to-read, rounded typeface with a large x-height, based on Plantin, making it excellent for long-form text copy. It has clear, well-defined shapes, making it perfect for early readers.
The future
I’m looking more into variable fonts and learning how I can can create my own variable version of the Afons typeface. This will help when it comes to controlling the readability of the text on a page.
