Font Issue: Thickening Stroke, but Keeping Sharp Corners

Question

Hi Everybody,

I have the common issue where I'm trying to expand a font, but I'm getting the chunky points. I've tried a number of options (stroke/expand, offset path, etc) but they're all coming out mitered or round, and I just don't know what to do, as this font isn't cursive but it has angles sharper than 90 degrees that I'm trying to take advantage of.

What's odd is one of the ends of one of my letters is scaling wonderfully, but the others are stubborn. I keep anayzing the nodes, but...I can't tell what's different. I figure that maybe if I can replicate how that point was created, maybe I can go over the other points and make them the same. Thus, going around any sort of procedural attempt to shape the font. (image attached)

Note: I do see that little round circle that's used for making edges round. I think that plays a role in the corner that's sharp, but I don't know how to re-create that, if that indeed is the leverage to make it sharp in reverse somehow...?

Can anybody tell me what I or the font maker did with the upper-right corner of this 'r' to make it sharp versus the other two points? If I could make this work, that would be a golden note going forward that I'd want to share with anybody having this problem.

As always, thank your for reading.

Xander36210402r7ns · Accepted Answer

I figured it out!!! (...I hope!)

Monica - Yes, you're right about the Stroke Limit. I was actully on point (no pun intended) starting out, the upper one was actually sharp. In trying to fix things I made it square, by reducing the Stroke Limit which was a backwards move. Enlarging a stroke value might be counter-intuitive, but that's one reason why it was working from the start.

Jacob - I managed to get the upper left one to cooperate but just flattening the corner with the pen carrot. the bottom one....the reason why this one was tricky is because the bezier handle I had in a neighboring node OVERSTRETCHED THE STROKE. It was enough to distort the point at the end. Once I pulled that back the stroke miter snapped back into a point. Here's a clip showing what I mean.

(hopefully this uploaded video posts, I tried posting it using the video button above but it didn't like the MP4 link I posted to my site)

It's a simple enough error, but if you don't know what to look for you can scramble all through the settings and the solution is right in front of you, just ease back the neighboring bezier node - it's crowding the corner! So if anybody has this happen and it's a giant mystery, this could very well be the problem .

Bobby Henderson · Answer

Choices are a bit limited how to handle the corners on stroke or path offset effects. The corner options in the Stroke or Offset Path dialog boxes will affect the object on a global basis -all corners will be styled the same. Paths that have fairly sharp corner angles can get some pretty wacky looking results.

It's possible to create a copy of the object and style its corners differently and then use path editing tools to mix the good part of the two results together. Otherwise the corners will have to be edited manually using things like the little round circle tool that appears in the corners.

Astute Graphics' Dynamic Corners plugin allows more control over that kind of situation.

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