Squid & Owl: Fun Font Facts

Per Brock's flattering request, a post about the S&O fonts. All these images have been added to the S&O Flickr set, even though they aren't really supposed to be part of the book in progress. Except for the first, which shows off handsome Tentacule, in caps and lower case: 

Yes, that's what I'm planning to use for a cover. But font-wise, let's start with humble Pidge:

Pidge is the font I use when The Stupid Pigeons (see p. 62) are involved. (Exception to the rule: they were on p. 61, also, but I did not use it.) Pidge is illegible and inspired by old wrapping paper. A birthday theme, if I recall. It took quite a while to design. Perhaps you can tell that, by the time I got to Y and Z, I was tired. What are the odds that I will ever - ever - want to type a word containing either Y or Z using this font? To this date I have not needed them.

Next up. Tentacule itself.

Tentacule is the main font I use in Squid and Owl. It's based on an old Victorian font of uncertain provenance and nomenclature. If anyone can enlighten me about it's ancestry with any specificity, I would be curious to hear the tale. Basically, the story is that I found an old and tiresome X-Mas book for children (no date, but probably around 1900) that was, as an added bonus - very ill-printed. It reprints "Twas the night before Christmas", using the font (or face, if you prefer) that I now call Tentacule.

I was fascinated by all the nasal drips - off the lower-case r, for example. 

It was very ugly and not Christmas-y. Also, I didn't have all the letters. So I set about to redesign and refine to my taste. And the result was: Tentacule. I am proudest of the capital Q, which I think recalls a piece of cheap, reproduction Victorian (possibly Queen Anne style?) furniture, stabbing itself to death with one of its own cabriole legs, out of grief that no one wants to buy it. That's not something you can say about every Q you pass on the street.

Having thus reinvented Tentacule, for my private use, I soon noticed it everywhere. Well, in several places. It has, I have deduced with some confidence, propagated itself under the name Ringlet, thanks to Dan X. Solo's (marvelous, wonderful!) Solotype Catalog (see p. 12). Search around and find the free font by that name. But somehow this unlovable item made its way from the Victorian era through the 1960's and early 1970's. And I realized it wasn't supposed to look so thick and drippy. That was just the bad print quality - ink bleeding into cheap paper, of the X-Mas book. It's really supposed to be more elegant and spidery.

"they clashed at sight - but were seldom out of each other's thoughts" is a singularly confusing invocation of visual and mental interpenetration. Why is it 'but', rather than 'and', just for example? I could go on. 

But it's a hard font to pin down. Victorian, not art nouveau or art deco, obviously. Still, it's versatile in its spidery way. It could be sentimental and flowery or trippy or even Mersey-ish.

This isn't quite all the custom fonts I have worked up for S&O, but Tentacule and Pidge are the only ones worth showcasing in their own whimsical right, I think. The fonts for some of the "Just Not So" stories are a kind of hybrid between Baskerville and Tentacule that I call, naturally, Baskercule. They split the difference between the actual Baskerville used, for example, on the opening pages, and the Tentacule pages.

So basically S&O is an aesthetic cross between a bad Victorian X-Mas book, Australasian Romance For the Loveless, and Baggy Merseybeat Poetry.

Any questions?

Comments

[by JOS I Simple Blueprint]

this is great! love the first image....

happy weekend- joanna
http://simpleblueprint.typepad.com/

[Salient]

Everything but the lowercase w is certified awesome. And hey, I ~like~ the Z for Pidge.

[jholbo]

Good eye, Salient. The lower case w is weak. You're right.

[Salient]

Also, what's the font used for the title "Visit of St. Nicholas"?

Also, the uppercase Q actually looks quite like a Q which has discovered it has agency over its one limb and is therefore preparing to leap away from that smelly RS. Think coiled frog's leg.

[Brock]

Thanks, John. I love the capital X of Tentacule. It's a pity that you probably won't get a chance to use it. Perhaps if Owl travels with Xenophon and the Greeks to fight against Squid and the Persians.

[Bill Benzon]

What software did you use to design and compile your type?

[The Modesto Kid]

Perhaps if Owl travels with Xenophon and the Greeks to fight against Squid and the Persians.

Alternately Squid could team up with agents Mulder and Scully to investigate the extraterrestrial abduction of Owl.

[pholbo]

Caps on and off to the Font Le Roy.

[jholbo]

Hey Bill, I use Scanfont, a plugin for Typetool, from Fontlab. Unfortunately, these are not free and not super cheap. But I have a new hobby, apparently, so I sprung for them.

http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/typetool/

[22]

Nice fonts. I like Pidge. I hope that you would let others have the previlege of using your fonts.

If you really want to know the provenance of Ringlet, the owner of www.typeheritage.com might be able to give you an answer. Too bad Anna has not dropped by alt.binaries.fonts for a few months now or I would ask her myself.

Nice fonts.

[full rapidshare]

Everything but the lowercase w is certified awesome. And hey, I ~like~ the Z for Pidge.