Turnip: a Bookman-like serif face with rounded outer shapes and squarish inner shapes

[Member enn…]

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Profiled by Ellen Shapiro on:
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http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Turnip/

Does the systematic violation of (expansionist) chirographic logic underlying the deliberated dissociation between Turnip’s inner and outer shapes put the typeface in a class with Legato, and does it have the same benefits in terms of readability?

Peter

[Member Rya…]

It's more beautiful than Legato, for sure.

[Member hra…]

Text is not about beautiful letters.

Bravo David.

hhp

[Member Rya…]

Of course the obvious problem with the comparison is that one is a serif and one is a sans.

[Member Jos…]

Is that a problem? The question is about whether the innovative detachment of the two sides of the stroke is beneficial compared to more traditional serifed types (in Turnip's case) or more traditional sans (in Legato's case). It's the same question. Though sans are traditionally less influenced by writing to begin with.

[Member Rya…]

interesting question

[Member dbe…]

I think this is just a failure of terminology rehashed over and over again, that everything without serifs is one big general class of type.

[Member Dav…]

For what it's worth, here is what was going through my head while drawing Turnip:

I think of Bookman and the late-19th/early-20th century "oldstyle antiques" as faux oldstyles: the serifs/terminals are kind of calligraphic-ish, the structure not so much. The inner and outer shapes do virtually the same thing; the diagonal stress is gone, and with it, the dynamism that you get from the calligraphy-inspired thick/thin relationship.

Seeing how Bookman feels static feels in text, I figured that a sense of movement within the letter shapes, especially horizontal movement, has value in a block of text. Not sure if it's about making a text more readable, but maybe more compelling? I wanted that kind of movement in Turnip, like what happens naturally to shapes rooted in calligraphy, but in a more blatant, non-calligraphic sort of way. So I tried pitting inside against outside in hope that the tension would make each character look like it was unable to sit still.

I wrote a little more about the drawing on my personal site, if it's relevant: http://djr.com/typefaces/turnip/#story

[Member hra…]

The screen rendering is great too.

BTW, with the Regular and Book being so close in weight, did you consider making them uniwidth?

hhp

[Member Rya…]

David, what do you think about the idea that the letters are to some extent constructed of oval outer shapes and more squarish counter shapes? I mean, did it just kind of happen organically during construction, or was it part of what you were trying to do from the outset?

[Member ken…]

Ryan — Did you read the backstory that DJR linked to? I think that basically answers your question:

I accentuated the tension between round, doughy outer forms and crisp, angular inner counters.

. . . if you interpret “round, doughy" as more or less oval and “crisp, angular” as squarish, that is.

[Member hra…]

Not mentioned in that piece however is the ghost of Dwiggins, swirling all around us...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ohbendy/5943111278/

hhp

[Member Rya…]

those 2 arent the same thing. Tension can exist in many other formats other than circle outside square inside. But if someone sets out with the idea beforehand, 'and now I will draw something with roundish outer shapes and squarish counters.'...

[Member Joh…]

What is interesting to me about this design, with regard to Peter's original question, is the way in which the results of David's approach differ optically from those of Evert's in Legato. This is most obvious at larger sizes, where edge perception overrides shape perception, but it leads me to think that there is probably a mid-to-large size range at which Legato is more readable than Pumpkin. The difference I perceive is that at larger sizes the counters of Pumpkin start to pop out, especially in the heavier weights, whereas in Legato the relationship of inner and outer shapes aims for a less dynamic tension and maintains a strong sense of black shape structure even as size and weight increase. As David says, the effect of his approach is to 'make each character look like it was unable to sit still'. Is that a good goal in terms of readability? I don't know. It is roughly the opposite of my own approach, which is to create a sense of stability, but then I am often dealing with writing systems that have built-in instability of various kinds.

[Member Rya…]

I think comparison to other new-calligraphic types, such as, Legato, and dare I say it--Fenland, are just. That is not meant to demean Turnip in any way whatsoever. But there seems to be a new school of calligraphic-geometric being formed. It's the new black.

[Member hra…]

John, you were making pumpkin pie right before that post, weren't you... ;-)

Seriously: Great observations - and David's "unable to sit still" does make me... fidgety! But at least it's a worthy challenge to the status quo.

Ryan, the new school (still a rag-tag bunch of guerrillas) is actually specifically non-calligraphic. It's not the new black yet, but things are looking much better than they did just a few years ago.

hhp

[Member qua…]

I have recently encountered one classic example of square inside round... AdLib.

[Member Joh…]

Er, yeah. Turnip, not pumpkin. Could have been worse. Could have been rutabaga.

[Member Dav…]

did you consider making them uniwidth?

I suppose I was thinking about Book and Regular as being less like true grades (that solve a technical problem) and more a stylistic choice. But that's post-rationalization, really...it's a good question, and if a user ever needed compatible width versions, I would be happy to create them.

Ryan: But if someone sets out with the idea beforehand, 'and now I will draw something with roundish outer shapes and squarish counters.'...

Inner/outer play wasn't a real factor in the original drawings...it crept in as I was looking for ways to make the design pop a little more in text.

Hrant: Not mentioned in that piece however is the ghost of Dwiggins, swirling all around us...

Definitely...he was all about this sort of un-calligraphic dynamism.

John: Is that a good goal in terms of readability? I don't know. It is roughly the opposite of my own approach, which is to create a sense of stability, but then I am often dealing with writing systems that have built-in instability of various kinds.

That's a good question. :-)

I guess that's sort of the thesis of this typeface, that there's something interesting in running contrary to common traits of text face design: balance, stability, evenness.

[Member hra…]

The strange thing about Dwiggins though is that -as far as I know- he never explicitly verbalized his strong un-calligraphic leanings - in fact he often extolled the pen! Or maybe his thoughts have been "filtered for publication"... But probably it's a case of a designer with incredible inventive intuition - so strong that his formal intellect could not keep up to explain what was going on. In fact some of Dwiggins's formal statements can only be described as ludicrous, such as the view that extenders are only for show, with no positive role to play in readability!

running contrary to common traits of text face design: balance, stability, evenness.

Which must make sense at least on some level, since information can only arise from contrast.

Do you remember that slide from my Mexico City talk (that you requested) where I showed two opposite "poles"? One thing I was trying to say there was exactly that the textbook Modernist desires for things like balance, stability and evenness belong towards the display end of the axis, not the text end (although neither extreme of the axis can exist in a pure state).

hhp

[Member Joh…]

Hrant: Which must make sense at least on some level, since information can only arise from contrast.

Contrast, in the sense of differentiation, isn't at odds with balance, stability or, even, evenness in design. You don't need a building to be unbalanced and off-kilter in order to tell where the door is and how many windows there are.

With regard to differentiation: in my 'Same Difference' lecture at St Brides a few years ago, I looked at kinds of sameness that occur in writing systems and the job of differentiation that the type designer must do, and at the kinds of difference that occur and the job of 'making same' that the type designer must do. On the whole, I reckon we are given more difference than sameness to work with, so the bulk of our work is in creating kinds of sameness that do not decrease the necessary sameness but that produce visual harmony and stable relationships between signs.

[Member ken…]

The strange thing about Dwiggins though is that -as far as I know- he never explicitly verbalized his strong un-calligraphic leanings - in fact he often extolled the pen!

WAD essentially thought of what he was doing as “calligraphic.” Doesn’t necessarily fit with most of today’s practitioner’s definitions. But that’s how he thought about it.

[Member dan…]

In fact some of Dwiggins's formal statements can only be described as ludicrous, such as the view that extenders are only for show, with no positive role to play in readability!

I don’t think that Dwiggins was the only designer of his time who might have thought like this. Victor Hammer, for instance, believed that ascenders and descenders slowed down reading. He preferred Latin to any of the modern European languages he was familiar with, as it features much less of them in text. Not that Dwiggins and Hammer worked under similar circumstances, but … there you go.

[Member hra…]

Kent, my contention is that Dwiggins's thinking was out of touch with his doing.

Dan, even though Hammer's belief is more extreme than Dwiggings's, to me it's not as shocking because we don't hold up Hammer's work as aiding readability while we do do that for the M-formula. I think Hammer created amazing display type, while the most amazing thing about Dwiggins was his un-calligraphic output.

hhp

[Member dan…]

I think Hammer created amazing display type.

In fact, all of Hammer’s typefaces are text typefaces, as far as he was concerned (except perhaps Andromaque). He certainly used them for book printing … quite extensively so. Hammer’s work is certainly calligraphic though … he was in the Edward-Johnston-line. Our association with his work as being in the “display” arena is probably because of his stylistic unorthodoxy, and also because of the terribly poor photo and digital versions of American Uncial. This, though, has nothing to do with David’s awesome typeface! Sorry for the tangent.

I brought Hammer up because I think that our current ideas around reading might only have come about 70 some-odd years ago. Before these ideas got to designers and foundries, other things might have been going on. I suspect that there were plenty more type designers who thought like Dwiggins or Hammer might have.