papasmerf said:
Marconi invented the radio and you drew an S
No comparison
Actually, I didn't draw the S. No one did. It was 'sculpted', like creating a statue from a block of marble, but in two dimensions.
This is the original design:
It dates from 1874. I liked the concept of simulating a three dimensional, raised letter, viewed from below in two dimensions, and above and left of center in three dimensions, but I didn't like the rendering, or the widths of the letters. I felt it had potential, but could be improved.
I started the redesigning by reducing the width by 20%, but not changing the height. My unaltered vector image looked like this:
Every green, red or blue point on the contour outlines is a node. between any two nodes is a straight or curved line.
The yellow dots are control handles. They determine the placement and eccentricity of curvature to a non straight line.
Anywhere you have a node on a curved line, you'll have a flat spot, so my method is to remove all nodes that are unnecessary in holding the outlines in place.
In the fully edited version:
Only 37 nodes are used, (17 for the letter, 20 for the edges). Most of the nodes and handles are aligned with each other horizontally or vertically, and most of the rest are aligned diagonally, but it's difficult to show that, in this small scale image. I do fine editing at about 36 times larger, I think, possibly 32. Each of the grid squares in the background represents 100 horizontal and vertical planes, so there are 10,000 different X/Y intersections on which a node or handle can be placed, (you can put two or more nodes and/ or handles on the same intersection, or 1+ of each).
I'm left handed, and I can't draw with pen and paper, so you can imagine how much worse I would draw with my right hand and a computer mouse. All changes between the two images above were done in the font editor. I didn't know what the final design would look like, not exactly. The alignments of the nodes and handles determined what the end result would look like:
Which looks like someone drew it, quickly and precisely, but in fact, it was manipulated into its final configuration. To my knowledge, this method hasn't been used before. I don't understand why it works this way, but all of the letters align similarly:
In the upper right side edge, corrections have been made since I did this screen cap. The inner and outer black edges are now parallel. That involved moving the node on the tip of the point down and to the right.
The width of the white border on the S is not consistent, but that's intentional. When scaled small, the white needs to be thicker on a curve than when straight, or it will not look comparable at text sizes.
Vector design is very different from other computer art because it's primary purpose is display at different sizes. Some small errors, (say 1-2 mm, if the letter is 14 feet tall), will be noticeable when the text is 1/4 of an inch tall, and that's usually how I found them.
So, I didn't draw an S. I'm unable to draw an S. I can, however, construct an original S, that seems to have had a logical configuration, waiting to be discovered.
I haven't just done the S and K. The entire alphabet, numbers and punctuation are all completed. I just need to write the procedure manual, so someone else can have an alternative to the 'by the book' method, where most of the time is spent constructing the outline in 'connect the dots' fashion, as opposed to honing a rough shape, like I did. The established method requires art training. Mine requires a lot of time, and high school level math.