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.
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
- 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.
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.