Name: Tabulamore Script
Type: Retail typeface
Publisher: Tabular Type Foundry
Release year: 2019
Purchase links: I Love Typography, MyFonts
Monospaced fonts look clumsy because of the varying letter widths in Latin. I find the aesthetics fascinating but let’s see it from a traditional viewpoint for the sake of argument that it’s ugly. The problem is that you cannot maintain varying letter proportions and consistent spacing at the same time. Actually, you can solve the problem pretty easily; just give a lot of space until the shape differences no longer affect spacing and texture. The problem with it, however, is that the spacing is so wide that the letters do not hold together to form words anymore, but what if I forcefully connect them with a stroke, like a script?
Monospaced scripts have always been an interesting topic to me. When it works, it works like magic; IBM Selectric Typewriter Script a fine example and looks especially well in its original form (The digital outline with no ribbon texture is a little too unambiguous). It works partly because it casually gives up on connection where it would be difficult to do so.
In this typeface, I wanted to make a monospaced script that does not feel monospaced at all. By choosing a loosely spaced script, I could fit W and i in the same width without compromising the letter proportions. I think the resulting typeface works great in this regard, and it is still surprising how well it hides what should be a rigid restriction. The caps exceed the width boundary a lot, which is not a problem in normal sentences.
But what if you type in all caps? I am of the opinion that a modern script face should support all caps, rather than tell the users to not use the script fonts in all-caps (which is fair, traditionally speaking). I see two approaches: making actual small caps as seen in Zapfino Extra, or providing matching sans/roman which seem more popular nowadays. I have taken the former route, a small cap that is more typographic but handwritten. I took the inspiration from a style called Architects Casual, which seems to work well. It is fully automatic; it converts the caps to the small caps as soon as you type a second capital letter or number.
It turns out you can make a monospace typeface that looks natural, so long as that’s the priority over practicality. To be frank, I see almost no benefit for a script like this to be monospaced. I was making it purely as a challenge for its own sake.
The typeface name is tabular + amore, which should be self explanatory. I find typeface naming easy; if you can’t come up with anything, you just need to go for non-English words or invent one (type designers should play more Pokémon). Sometimes it is too easy that I struggle to design a typeface worthy of the cool name I came up with.