Burrow Lab

Interacting with parameters organised in logical groups with sketches of the graphical interfaced alongside knops to get a better sense of the type features that will be affected by your actions. (Of course the algorithm is bugging around as I am going through my list of bugs…)

In this demo, I am testing the generation of a font family with different weights, as well as extended, slanted, and monospaced styles.
In theory, each parameter could be adjusted for each style, but for now, I am interpolating between two and ten values.

Playing a bit with Turing patterns…

We had a small breakthrough today. Thanks to the help and collaboration of @flozia.bsky.social we managed to export a font with 4 axes, 16 masters from our parametric tool.
Unfortunately, many effects are not easily convertible to the variable system, so I stick with the circles for quick tests.

Improving stroke merging algorithm. Depending on the total count of the shapes, the stroke color changes between pink and yellow, for debugging reasons and also the animation helps to get a sense for what is actually happening :)

Ink traps/Spikes • The new feature is an angle clamp (min/max) that allows corners to be selected generatively.

A screencast of an ongoing development for a little design app with parametric type. Now featuring a test run for kerning cushions. (More details and conversation regarding the parametric spacing/kerning approach you can find on my mastodon account if you are interested to dive deeper)

A little upgrade in the rendering for stroke endings.
Catching bugs.

#parametrictype #typetool #typedesign #code #bugs

Kerning cushion? Naive & provocative vision: If we could automate the spaces between all pairs of letters and completely ignore how fonts currently work across software, could we give up (left/right sidebearings) in the context of writing at all? Think of space as relative instead of absolute... 🚩

I decided to finally upgrade my daily routine with a dishwasher. Should I get an energy efficiency B or save 25% for the same model energy efficiency D.

Yes please! ✨

Current kerning implementation: The bubble shape currently struggles with edges and therefor keeps letter pairs like TA to far apart. Otherwise given the wild parametric nature, I am quite happy with a first attempt!

A first test to create a kerning bubble by offsetting evenly placed points on the outline with a binominal distribution along its normal axis, to determine the approximate kerning by making the letters bubbles touch.

A Polygon bubble wrapper around each of the three letters «TAV»

Thanks to @christophknoth.bsky.social, who reminded me of Bubble Kern (tosche.net/non-fonts/bu...) which lead me to a first step to generate a very simplified polygon bubble around each character to get a better mathematical idea of letters distance to each other.

Each characters width controlled separately, independent but in alignment with the global width.

Playing around with a combination of stroke weight, spacing, slant and stroke extension of the curve segments, both horizontally and vertically.

Parametric spacing improved for slanted letters ✨

Some updates to the algorithm preview. I am still struggling to find a good concept for the spacing of slanted letters. Currently including the angle in the profile calculation and using it as a reference for the offset. Any suggestions for research material related to spacing and slanted fonts?

After changing 2 numbers in some vector intersection calculation, i was able to highly decrease render time. Now I get between 70–120 milliseconds for the basic latin uppercase, lowercase and figures for the basic algorithm on my old machine.

Display of rendertime for latin character lowercase m

Just decreased total render time by a factor of 6. The slowest latin letter currently takes around 3.4 milliseconds on my 4 year old computer. Render time also fluctuates depending on parameter settings. More or less overlaps can be caused by the stroke weight for instance.

Thanks, do you use one or the other?

too much going on 🚩

Alternatives for Instagram anyone?

Recap on the filter side of things: Circles places a long skeleton, radius and offset controlled with noise, simplified implementation of metaballs, rearranging circles to an invisible grid.

#parametrictype #typedesign #typography #code

Thanks, more to come soon!

Left/Right negative space profile to determine automated spacing. New stuff coming up :)

A test run of wip rounded corner algo on parametric type

Running the rounded corners modification on a Hiragana Character

Rounded corners filter on letter P

Rounded corners filter on letter A

Working on the rounded corners module. Appart from smoothing out some edges, the next step will be to clamp rounding in relation to neighbouring corners to aboid overlaps.

I have (again) roughly implemented a new letter building algorithm. I will also be giving a demo and a workshop at Automatic Type Design 3 in Nancy, France next month, so it will be a great to put it to a test!

#parametrictype #typedesign #typography #parametric #code #programing #math

A little teaser from the preview interface for working on the algorithm-specific code.

#parametrictype #typetool #typedesign #code #wip #algorithmic #javascript