TPW Corral

A western style typeface for wrangling small text, made in the letterform archive’s Intro to Modern Type Design program.

Type Design
Glyphs
Font Development
Gallery
Description

This is a typeface that I made for Letterform Archive’s Intro to Modern Type Design program during the summer of 2023. My goal for the project wasto make a typeface with a classic western feel, but that could work at text sizes, as well as display sizes. The typeface still needs refining, but I’m really proud of what I was able to accomplish solely during the ten-week class. In the future, I plan to refine the proportions a bit and work on production tasks such as kerning and hinting. I also planto add weights, and create a full variable font.

I learned an incredible amount in the short time that I spent taking this class. I had made typefaces before, but my learning had been completely self directed. During this class, I learned strategies for type design ideation, sketching and system design, among many others. I refined my vector editing skills to a completely new place and gained a proficiency with type design concepts and real life applications in Glyphs that I am really proud of.

a sketch of tpw corral in pencil on tracing paper
The initial sketch for my typeface. Note the clunkiness of the serifs when compared to the final version. My initial idea was much more experimental then the final result, because I realized throughout the process that the effect I was seeking would best be achieved by adhering more to typical type geometry in all but a few situations.
a screenshot from glyphs showing the interpolation of the character n in tpw corral
this is a inside look at one of the select few characters that I have started to work on multiple weights for. The interpolation already works as intended in the exported variable font for these few characters.
a screenshot of the vector outline of the lower-case s in tpw corral
the lower-case s is the character that challenged me the most. I feel that in the end I made a good compromise between my desired aesthetic and the type design conven- tions for the lower-case s.