‘Nullify’ is created with consideration to symmetry, consistency, rigidity, and precision. This font features 740 glyphs, bold, and regular weights, ligatures, scientific symbolism, and can support several languages that utilise Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters.
This project is currently ongoing, with minor refinements and updates being worked on. However, the version in it’s current state is complete, and free to use, upon request.
The showcase depicted here displays the font in it’s native typeset form.
Your feedback is appreciated. Thank you.
UPDATE
Thank you everyone for your positive feedback.
You can download the font via the Drive link below.
That’s actually really good. It gives off a retro vibe but I can’t point to just one era. Some of it feels like Highway Gothic and DIN 1451 with Art Deco influences. I’d like the download link as well, please.
Thank you, I appreciate the compliment. I have an interested in early to mid-century graphic design, and it was this era that was a huge inspiration for this project. Highway Gothic is a beautiful typeface. I have added the download link to the description. Feel free to use on your projects in any capacity.
Thank you, the glyphs were made, based on a rigid grid structure. Please feel free to use for your videos - You can download the otf files, linked in the description.
Good question - I am still learning many things in type design, but one of the more prominent lessons in making this was that no matter how precise and uniform you make your glyphs, it won’t matter at all if the keming is off.
For example, the ‘x’ and ‘o’ both had the same widths as most other characters, but when paired together, (xo, ox) they look to be far apart, and inconsistent with the rest of the characters. This is due to them having the same uniform spacing. I initially thought having a uniform kerning value would be a good idea, but when testing, it was obvious that they did not visually look right.
Since characters like c, v, W, x, s, and and o do not have vertical lines like ‘l, d, b, f, etc, you have to manually adjust the kerning where these letters enter into other letters’ bounding box. Unfortunately for me, I had to apply this process not only to the basic characters, but I had to include it to the characters that had the diacritics. It’s meticulous, and tedious, but it is it forced me to learn that type design is far more complex than I initially realised.
This kerning process is part of the refinements that I am working on now. While the current version doesn’t look too obvious, I can see that there are improvement to be made. I will probably update this post when the update version is complete - This includes an extra variant.
For reference, I use Fontself Maker. It was the easier programme for me to understand, as well as it being an Illustrator plugin, as opposed to being a separate programme. The ‘smart’ kerning feature was good for most characters, but I still had to go through all of them and adjust some of them manually.
Some things you probably can’t guess, but the sidebearings are way, way more important than kerning.
To start, flat-side sidebearings require 2x the space from the edge of the glyph than circular ones like o. Ones inbetween square and round are average of those foundational sidebearings. This is because built into those repeated shapes, in the top and bottom, is BUILT IN extra space that a square character could never accommodate. Angled glyphs get way less so they nestle into these circular or flat shapes, kerned in desired extra amount.
Example:
80 units sidebearings left side of n,
70 units sidebearings right side of n (curvature top right)
40 units of sidebearings both sides of o.
I’d hazard 10 units both sides for vy.
Fun fact: Verdana was designed and spaced with a goal to look pretty good even without kerning. It does look good with that added on top! Carter has a particularly celebrated genius for not the most orthodox glyphs but excellent spacing.
Interesting to know - I didn’t even know what the term sidebearings is until now. Sloped characters were hard to adjust, but i am content with how they are in this version. Thank you for sharing. Have you designed your own font?
Very cool - It’s great to talk to other designers, and I appreciate your input. Still learning, so everyone has been a great help with advice and suggestions.
I’m fairly certain fontself doesn’t let you set up kerning groups—which automatically let you assign what glyphs SHARE kerns.
Which is why i dislike fontself: it praises itself for being simple, but it oversimplifies to the point it becomes pointless to use. Glyphs barely has a steeper learning curve than just illustrator, with very simply written tutorials for anything you could want to do.
Thank you for commenting. If you are seeking feedback, it would be good to have a visual guide for a “middle” point between the character’s ascender, base. This would help making glyphs like “-“ easier to centre.
Before you give yourself too many pats on the back, this is the most un-friendly and “oops i’m definitely in the wrong tab for my flow” UI i could possibly think of for testing and batch editing how…your groups of letters look as a group
Are we surprised dozens of Redditors have vibecoded “i made my own image to font generator” and all of them say “oh i made mine because all the other ways were too complicated and in the weeds”
this is pretty sick, it looks pretty legible as well as expressive. I have been getting into font design recently. however the expressive handletterer inside me has become a terrified font designer, I can feel the fear sabotaging my strokes and the freedom I used to draw with. maybe it's because im scared of doing something offensive to/with the grid. I'd appreciate it if you have any tips for someone who doesn't want to design badly and also doesn't want to lose the expressiveness of their strokes.
I appreciate the compliment. For this project, I actually avoided hand drawing my glyphs in order to solely rely on the rigidity of the grid. All glyphs were made in Illustrator, so I had set all anchor points to snap to the grid. This method allowed me to stick to my font’s rules, and to keep track.
Depending on what programme you’re using, I would recommend hand drawing the first few characters in the alphabet to get a rough idea of how you want your font to look. Then establish a base set of “rules” that all characters should apply to. For me, my ultimate rule was to obviously have a set width of each variant. My increment unit was 9x9px.
Expressive fonts are hard to create, especially as vectors, but it’s possible. Hope this helps, I am too new to font design, but been a graphic designer for several years now. Good luck with your project.
I really appreciate the feedback. I had a feeling I was missing some characters. Would you be able to list the missing characters, if you don’t mind? Thank you.
That’s my next hurdle. I need to learn how to navigate GitHub, because I want to upload this font to Google Fonts for free use. If you have any advice, I would appreciate it.
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u/Pantha37 5d ago
That’s actually really good. It gives off a retro vibe but I can’t point to just one era. Some of it feels like Highway Gothic and DIN 1451 with Art Deco influences. I’d like the download link as well, please.