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Stick No Bills: Case Study

Stick No Bills v001, March 2015
Stick No Bills v001, March 2015

Overview

Stick No Bills is a libre stencil typeface for Sinhala, Tamil and Latin. It began as the bespoke face of the Stick No Bills poster gallery in Galle, and it was Mooniak's first complete font release.

ClientStick No Bills Poster Gallery, Galle
StudioMooniak, Colombo
StartedFebruary 2015
First releasev001, 20 March 2015
Latest releasev1.220, February 2017
ScriptsSinhala, Tamil, Latin
WeightsSix, from Extra Light to Extra Bold
LicenceSIL Open Font License 1.1
Sourcegithub.com/mooniak/stick-no-bills-font
Specimenmooniak.com/stick-no-bills-font
Sinhala, Latin and Tamil, cut by the same stencil logic
Sinhala, Latin and Tamil, cut by the same stencil logic

The brief

The gallery already had drawings for the Latin capitals by Martyn Hodges. Mooniak was asked to turn them into a full font, with Latin 1 support, and the gallery agreed to release it free under the OFL.

  • Follow different stencil structures to suit each script.
  • Avoid horizontal cuts as much as possible.
  • Aim for sizes over 18pt.
  • Target short strings of text.
Latin capitals in FontForge, February 2015
Latin capitals in FontForge, February 2015
Numerals and punctuation added
Numerals and punctuation added

Lowercase

The lowercase sketched by the gallery's designers felt too far from the capitals, and the scratch pattern did not look right. We redrew it, matching the blacks while keeping the condensed quality.

Sketch from the gallery's designers
Sketch from the gallery's designers
First lowercase design
First lowercase design
Where we were at the end of February
Where we were at the end of February
Deadline close: a working set
Deadline close: a working set
Spacing and metrics
Spacing and metrics

v001

After many iterations, v001 went out on 20 March 2015, with a project page, a demo video and all files on GitHub. Most of the work was drawn by Kosala Senevirathne.

Watch the demo video · Process videos on YouTube

Italic

First pass: an automatically slanted version, April 2015
First pass: an automatically slanted version, April 2015
Fixing the @
Fixing the @

Sinhala

We then expanded Stick No Bills into a multilingual family, starting with Sinhala. There was no Sinhala stencil font. The only benchmark was the stencil lettering on railway stations and buses, where cuts land in all the wrong places. Our letters were built from the stencil structure up.

The best Sinhala stencil we had seen: Dareniyagal Bus Depot. Photo from Found Type Lanka
The best Sinhala stencil we had seen: Dareniyagal Bus Depot. Photo from Found Type Lanka

Review

Annotated Sinhala letters from the development repository.

Keep the cuts the same size. Maintain the weight distribution.
Keep the cuts the same size. Maintain the weight distribution.
Make the circle a little smaller. Rework the letter.
Make the circle a little smaller. Rework the letter.

Light

The Light weight, July 2015
The Light weight, July 2015

The family grew to six weights, from Extra Light to Extra Bold. Tamil followed, with a separate Jaffna set pairing Tamil and Latin.

Credits

Martyn Hodges, Kosala Senevirathne, Lasantha Premarathne, Siva Puranthara, Tharique Azeez, Ayantha Randika and Pathum Egodawatta. Special thanks to Meg and Philip James Baber of the Stick No Bills gallery for making the font open and free for all.

All the original blog posts · GitHub