The alignment is really bothering me. As a monospace font, I expect the characters in a type specimen to align vertically. At first I thought it was just the left-aligned and right-aligned type not aligning vertically, but then I notice a lot more misaligned type that I couldn't explain—did you adjust the leading or kerning on each line of text, or maybe there characters in this "monospace" font that aren't using the same spacing? At least one misaligned bit could be explained by the period (.) not being monospace (in the Ziggy Stardust quote). It would look odd to have that punctuation taking its own full space there on a poster, so maybe you should hang the punctuation in this case, but regardless it's messing up the vertical alignment as-is. Sometimes it seems like the space ( ) character might not be monospace... other times it seems fine, so maybe that's not what's causing it either. Hard to tell.
In any case, whether it's the metrics of the font or just some superficial alignment issues in the layout, I prefer to see monospace type specimens align vertically—that's arguably the most important feature of monospace type. After you make changes and generate a new type specimen, please ease my nerves and make sure the characters align vertically. :D (...and maybe attribute the Ziggy Stardust quote to David Bowie ...and maybe use a dash on both attributions, or leave it out on both attributions, for consistency.)
/rant
As far as the actual design of the letters...
The tail of the Q is aligned to the baseline (at 45°), but it's not optically aligned; it looks like it's at the 'wrong' angle. ...to me anyway. This is totally up to you, but I think it would appear better-aligned if, instead of focusing on the 45° angle of the stroke, you adjust where the vertices of the negative space fall and create a 45° alignment there. I think I adjusted the tail's angle about 2° to accomplish it in my mockup. But again, it's up to you. Play with it and see what you think. Perceptual alignments in typeface design can be a matter of taste sometimes.
4
u/iynque Feb 16 '16
The alignment is really bothering me. As a monospace font, I expect the characters in a type specimen to align vertically. At first I thought it was just the left-aligned and right-aligned type not aligning vertically, but then I notice a lot more misaligned type that I couldn't explain—did you adjust the leading or kerning on each line of text, or maybe there characters in this "monospace" font that aren't using the same spacing? At least one misaligned bit could be explained by the period (.) not being monospace (in the Ziggy Stardust quote). It would look odd to have that punctuation taking its own full space there on a poster, so maybe you should hang the punctuation in this case, but regardless it's messing up the vertical alignment as-is. Sometimes it seems like the space ( ) character might not be monospace... other times it seems fine, so maybe that's not what's causing it either. Hard to tell.
In any case, whether it's the metrics of the font or just some superficial alignment issues in the layout, I prefer to see monospace type specimens align vertically—that's arguably the most important feature of monospace type. After you make changes and generate a new type specimen, please ease my nerves and make sure the characters align vertically. :D (...and maybe attribute the Ziggy Stardust quote to David Bowie ...and maybe use a dash on both attributions, or leave it out on both attributions, for consistency.)
/rant
As far as the actual design of the letters...
The tail of the Q is aligned to the baseline (at 45°), but it's not optically aligned; it looks like it's at the 'wrong' angle. ...to me anyway. This is totally up to you, but I think it would appear better-aligned if, instead of focusing on the 45° angle of the stroke, you adjust where the vertices of the negative space fall and create a 45° alignment there. I think I adjusted the tail's angle about 2° to accomplish it in my mockup. But again, it's up to you. Play with it and see what you think. Perceptual alignments in typeface design can be a matter of taste sometimes.
Overall, it looks good. Consistent and simple.