Sans serif Þ and Ф sitting on a baseline…

[Riccardo Sartori]

I’m not a reader of Icelandic, nor of any Cyrillic-written language, but I enjoy following discussions on the challenges of fine-tuning letter shapes.

It’s my understanding that, under certain circumstances, the stem of |Ф| is allowed to slightly extend under the baseline, in order to “give some air” to its bowl.

What I wonder is if a similar solution would be useful or acceptable applied to |Þ|.

I’m thinking mostly of sans serif designs, where the lack of a proper “foot” could make the glyph look visually unbalanced, and make it more difficult to differentiate from |D| and |P|.

[Wrzlprmft]

At least this site does not mention it and I have never seen this, so I would assume that it’s not a good idea.

But we have a user with a Þ in his username and avatar. He might have an informed opinion on this.

[Riccardo Sartori]

But Briem doesn’t specifically address sans serif designs.

What I have seen, though I don’t know how proper it is, are capital thorns with the same structure as lowercase ones, but with a |P| bowl instead of a |p|’s one.

[Ralf Herrmann]

It’s my understanding that, under certain circumstances, the stem of |Ф| is allowed to slightly extend under the baseline, in order to “give some air” to its bowl.

Do you know fonts by respected designers of the cyrillic script who did this? Would be good to check it out with real examples.  

Just thinking about it, ​I don’t really get the idea. It needs to be significant extension in order to have any clear visual impact on how the rounded parts interact with the stem. And a slight extension would be a weird idea when you think of all the other letters where stems end at the baseline or cap height. So I could only imagine such a correction in something like a logo where no other stemmed letters appear. 

[Riccardo Sartori]

On 24 January 2015 at 1:05 PM, Ralf Herrmann said:

Do you know fonts by respected designers of the cyrillic script who did this? Would be good to check it out with real examples.  

Looking at Paratype’s output, it looks like in most typefaces |Ф|’s stem extends under the baseline and/or caps-height by varying degrees, from subtle to obvious, across all styles, from text to display, in sans as well as in serifs and slabs.

download at MyFonts

 

[Þorsten]

I am not an expert on the intricacies of Icelandic typography, but for what it’s worth, I don’t think I have seen Þs that descended below the baseline (at least in formal body-text typefaces.) Unless native Icelanders with the relevant expertise recommended it, I’d stay away from designing Þs in such a fashion.