Berkeley Mono February Update

Hey Gang! First of all, thank you to everyone that participated in the Beta program. Feedback is very much appreciated.

Here is a quick update on the progress:

Website - Berkeleygraphics.com

It is already up: https://berkeleygraphics.com but does not have the Berkeley Mono pages yet.

Stack is extremely simple:

Python Flask
Docker
AWS S3
Completely server-side (No JS at all)
Payments through Stripe
Sentry (self-hosted) for alerts
AWS Cloudwatch for logs
Debian Bullseye 11 (self-hosted server)
Cloudflare + Cloudflare Analytics
No cookies

I had fun designing this little download module (only visible after you purchase Berkeley Mono). It allows you to customize the font files for particular stylistic-set defaults. Basically, no need to change anything in your application, font files will be prebuilt for your liking:

Berkeley Mono - Customer Account - Download Fonts

Berkeley Mono Specimens

This is the marketing bit. It's fun but also extremely time-consuming:

Italics

I am thrilled to announce, absolutely classic 16º obliques. I think Oblique works better for code than true Italics. Also, in the context of Berkeley Mono, it is difficult to design flamboyant Italics while also being sufficiently legible, straightforward, and code-friendly. Personally, I am not a fan of Operator Mono from Hoefler & Co. although many people seem to like that sort of a thing.

Designing proper obliques takes a long time because essentially it is designing a new typeface from scratch (almost). It is not a matter of slanting glyphs and calling it a day. Here is the most basic example. It gets quite involved for complicated glyphs such as f or R:

Handtuning of Obliques — Hand-tuning of Obliques

With a simple shear transformation, the corners get disproportionately heavy. This needs to be hand-tuned with a combination of shear + rotation (clockwise) + elbow grease.

Why 16 degrees? It is basically the classic oblique angle of Univers. Modern Univers from Linotype (now Monotype) uses a modest 12º italic angle. I think that's too boring. Not 70's and 80's enough. More importantly, you want to easily distinguish between Roman and Italics. If they're too similar, it misses the point entirely.