Type Design & Script Typography

Deep-dive guides to how fonts actually work under the hood, covering OpenType features, kerning and spacing, variable fonts, weight classification, and the syllable-centric Indic scripts of India. Written for type designers, font engineers, and anyone curious about how type renders correctly.

Font Engineering Series

OpenType Feature Reference

Every commonly used OpenType feature, including ligatures, small caps, numeral styles, and swashes, with a live before/after example and the CSS to turn it on.

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Kerning & Spacing

Side bearings, kerning pairs and classes, and tracking: the craft of making letters fit together, with a live spacing demo.

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How one font file can hold a whole range of weights and widths, and the CSS that drives it, with a live weight slider.

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Font Weight Classification & Stem Thickness

How "Bold" gets measured, not guessed: the PANOSE-1 method and the OS/2.usWeightClass scale, with a live stem-thickness tool.

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Indic Script Series

Introduction to Indic Scripts

The shared logic behind India's Brahmic scripts: syllable-centric writing, shaping engines, and what changes for type design.

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Devanagari Script

Headline, conjunct strategy, reph/rakar, nukta, and dense mark positioning, from orientation through font production.

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Gurmukhi Script

No continuous headline, the addak gemination mark, and subjoined (pairī) forms unique to Gurmukhi.

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The leanest consonant set in the series, no conjunct ligatures, and optional Grantha letters for loanwords.

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Below-base "vattu" stacking up to three deep, and vowel signs that never reorder to a pre-base position.

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Telugu's below-base stacking mechanism, drawn as a noticeably more compact hook.

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Malayalam Script

Nine dedicated chillu letters for a bare consonant, and a full conjunct tradition despite Tamil-like forms.

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Gujarati Script

Nearly Devanagari's full shaping model minus the shirorekha, plus two vowels for loanword sounds.

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Named ra-phala and ya-phala subjoined forms, plus khanda ta, a dedicated letter for a vowelless consonant.

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Devanagari's shaping model, drawn almost entirely in loops and curves, with no straight strokes to speak of.

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World Scripts

Alphabets vs. abjads, direction and the bidirectional algorithm, and the OpenType toolkit shared across four non-Brahmic scripts.

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The simplest shaping model in this track and, by a wide margin, the largest diacritic and language coverage burden.

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Cyrillic Script

Shares Latin's OpenType toolkit almost feature for feature, but its italic letterforms are genuinely redrawn, not slanted.

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Twenty-two consonant letters, five with a distinct final form, optional niqqud, and a dagesh drawn inside the glyph.

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A true cursive script: every letter takes up to four different shapes depending on its position in the word.

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