Custom scaling fonts?

[_Elizabeth_V_Butler_]

I have created a logo that is essentially a stylized font. It's now saved as outlines, so I can manipulate the letters individually.

One of the things I did was shrink the capital letters of the company name just a bit. In other words, if the name of the company is: "Hamburger Paradise", the "H" and the "P" are a little bit smaller in relation to the lowercase letters.

It looks great, except that the thickness of the stroke of the "H" and the "P" is just a bit narrower than the rest of the letters. Anyone know how to scale these letters and keep the scale? I can probably fake it, but I'd like it to be completely accurate.

[Trez_Hane]

There is just no perfect answer. If the font has a small caps set, you might
try scaling the initial caps up to fit your logo, but then they will likely
be too thick. I would probably apply a stroke to the outlined letters and
adjust its weight until it looked right.

Trez

[Neil_Keller]

Elizabeth,

I believe Illustrator (assuming that to be your application) has stroke settings that allow you to either scale the stroke or not as you change an element's size. That said, please post any followups to this application-specific question in the Illustrator forum for the best answers.

Thanks.

Neil

[Neil_Keller]

Elizabeth,

If you mean the thickness of the strokes that make up the letters (and not a stroked outline around the letters), use truecut small caps (if available) for proper optical correction of the weight of the letterforms. Or you will have to in essence create the letters themselves and use your eye.

Thanks.

Neil

[Neil_Keller]

Elizabeth,

If you mean the thickness of the strokes that make up the letters (and not a stroked outline around the letters), depending upon the size relationship, you can try to use truecut small caps (if available) for proper optical correction of the weight of the letterforms. More likely, you will have to in essence create the letters themselves and use your eye. Illustrator would be a suitable application to rework these letters.

However, I'm glad you noticed this and are willing to correct the problem. A lot of other designers either don't see the weight mismatch or don't care.

Thanks.

Neil

[D__McCahill]

You could convert the fonts to outlines, and carefully adjust the weight of the offending characters. This is not something that I would suggest to a rookie, but the fact that you noticed the discrepancy, and that it was wrong, makes me think you might have the eye to make such alterations effectively.

[Vernox]

I would try stroking first, but it might be a Don suggests and you are going to have to get in there with Illustrator or the like and manually tune the outlines to your satisfaction.

Yours
Vern

[Neil_Keller]

Vern,

Stroking is generally a bad idea as it creates "faux bold", an electronic bastardization of the font. No human eyes involved.

Without trying to add confusion with using two different meanings of "stroke" in the same sentence...

...The weight changes are not applied appropriately or in proportion to the strokes of the letters (thin strokes being heavied up as much as heavy strokes by applying a fixed stroke around the letter forms. In addition, the width/height relationships need to be adjusted in small caps (generally, the width is increased in relationship to the height). Other letter components, such as serifs, are absolutely destroyed by electronic stroking.

If there is no true-cut small cap font that matches, then just as a good typographic designer would do, you have to do all adjustments by eye.

Neil

[Neil_Keller]

Vern,

Stroking is generally a bad idea as it creates "faux bold", an electronic bastardization of the font. No human eyes involved.

Without trying to add confusion with using two different meanings of "stroke" in the same sentence...

...The weight changes are not applied appropriately or in proportion to the strokes of the letters (thin strokes being heavied up as much as heavy strokes by applying a fixed stroke around the letter forms. In addition, the width/height relationships need to be adjusted in small caps (generally, the width is increased in relationship to the height). Other letter components, such as serifs, are absolutely destroyed by electronic stroking.

If there is no true-cut small cap font that matches, then just as a good typographic designer would do, you have to do all adjustments by eye -- without stroking.

Neil