Drawing an italic that is not a slanted roman
How the Bellweather italic got its own a, k and spacing, and why it took longer than the roman.
The first Bellweather italic was the roman leaned over by twelve degrees. It looked fine in a single word and fell apart in a paragraph: the round letters looked heavy, the spacing was too loose, and the a stood out like a capital.
So Maren started again with a brush. An italic written with a pointed brush has its own logic. Strokes branch from the stem lower down, the a closes into a single bowl, and letters lean into each other. After about forty sheets the shapes that kept coming back became the new drawings.
What changed
- Single-story a and g. They are narrower than the roman forms and keep the rhythm even.
- A looped k and a curved v and w. The straight-sided roman forms looked stiff next to the round letters.
- Tighter spacing. The italic is about four percent narrower than the roman at the same weight, so a phrase in italic does not stretch a line.
The cost
The italic took seven months; the roman took four. Every weight had to be redrawn, not interpolated from the roman, and the optical size axis meant drawing the small and large masters twice.
Try it in the tester on the Bellweather page: choose an italic style and set a paragraph.