Д д Л л forms

[ravid-dubsteper]

how about to add these forms to the typeface?

[tphinney]

Definitely a question for @kateliev as the native Cyrillic user on the team!

[kateliev]

@ravid-dubsteper thank you for your suggestion! Unfortunately those are very tricky glyphs to design and require a lot of skill to execute properly. Yes they would have been the obvious choice for the Cyrillic set, especially the Russian one, but back then when we designed the Cyrillic for SG I decided to trop the style and focus more on the triangular one.

Reasons behind my decision:

• Aesthetic: In my opinion looking bit dated (archaic), especially in high contrast masters - thus not that much in par with the idea of Science (Fiction) Gothic. Also way too squarish leading to a way more monotone outlook.
• Pragmatic: Very tricky design, although looking very simple. Some masters will be looking much better than others. Hard to balance (width wise). Might spark a lot of discussion and unnecessary critique.

...In the light of the above, triangular was a no-brainer solution... and I guess... some 3 years after I am still standing behind my decision.

If you find that we are badly missing those style variants, we could add those as alternates some time in the future... but would need careful consideration.

[zndxcvbn]

If you stick to the triangle style of these glyphs, then I think the letter У у should also be made triangle-shaped. At the moment, it is similar to the style of the letter Д д Л л shapes that are offered in this ticket.

[kateliev]

@zndxcvbn well i guess you are kind of right about /У :) Might give it a try someday :)

On the other hand I kind of like how it plays nicely with the likes of /Ч. Creates sort of a pair :) everybody has a (similarly looking) "friend" this way. You see that А Д Л form a nice triplet but Ч was always kind of odd-ball. In the current solution У is kind of giving it aesthetical support.

[zndxcvbn]

@kateliev Yes, I think you should definitely try it) Regarding the "friendly" support, this type of letter У supports only one letter Ч, this means that there are much fewer such combinations than with triangular letter types (for example, at least about 3 vs 1, А Д Л vs У). The triangular type of letter У would also dilute the monotony you are talking about) Also, the square type of letter У actually duplicates Ч. This, of course, is super insignificant, since our brain is able to instantly distinguish such things (by the bottom of the letter, the brain is able to distinguish У from the supported letter). Perhaps, the similarity on one hand really helps. But on the other hand, the triangular type of capital letter У is similar to small y, which gives us a good simplicity, the brain does not need to distinguish two identical letters of different registers by shape, since they will differ only in size.