chris2fr/fengardo-redux

Fengardo Redux

About the project

Fengardo is a typeface started as a student project around 2007. A first version was released under a libre license (I think?) a few years later with at first only one regular & italic cut. Later on, the regular was revised and complemented by a black weight. This ‘neue’ version got a bit more success that the previous one but lacked new italics.

This typeface has been available on the website of the , and the project lingering since then. Other projects came along and although I received several requests to finish the unfinished styles and turn this typeface into a proper type family, I never got there.

Despite this situation, Fengardo developed a little life of its own, and as it’s been a libre typeface for a while now, it seems only natural to open this repository where willing souls can participate in making this typeface evolve at a slightly faster pace.

So here I leave the most recent files I worked on, which where beginnings of a new renewal. This repo and project’s codename will be Fengardo Redux, because I like the silliness of adding another suffix to this typeface’s name and because I’d love to see that face live again, or should I say, live yet another life.

Proposed short-term goals:

Here’s the list of things I felt should be done, some of them I started, but all of them unfinished:

• Redraw the italic and the black weight to match the quality of the new developing regular style
• There’s also room for improvement on the regular, for that matter
• Modify the black weight to reduce the ‘condensed’ effect it now has. This effect was never intended and is an early design mistake.
• Make the weights compatible for interpolation
• Harmonize character sets
• Tidy alternates, ligatures and all that stuff to keep only the things that are actually useful or wanted.
• Add anchors to ease the generation of a broader character set

Further suggestions

• Draw a black italic (compatible for interpolation as well)
• Generate smallcaps (again, if weights are compatible for interpolation, it should be easy).
• Draw light weights.

About the (initial) designer

Well that’s me, Captain Obvious.

I won’t write much here, just a few words to say that by opening this repository I don’t expect much of it and I myself won’t have much time to dedicate to this. This being, I will still be happy to answer questions any participant may have and hopefully, I’ll also find a bit of spare time to participate myself once in a while.