Homage Forum

Hi, I was reading an article about the development of "Decimal" a font based around old watch faces and I wondered if there are any good fonts for custom dial designs. We all have an idea of how a watch number should look and what shapes take lume well. Most old watches have 4's that look like this: and 6's and 9's that are open at the loop, etc.

just adding some context:

https://www.typography.com/blog/introducing-decimal

I will search for a suitable alternative in the meantime.

I have been searching for this kind of font for a while now, but I haven’t found it yet.. anyone knows?

That's a great example, a few digits punched into steel that shows what's needed.

I found this online tool, I'm going to try making some myself. https://www.glyphrstudio.com/
"How hard can it be"

Edit: quite hard indeed. I'm trying another tool https://www.calligraphr.com

this one also looks nice.

Making fonts is quite difficult, best to start by copying an existing font.

There is this FOSS piece of font making software called FontForge:

https://fontforge.org/en-US/

You can preview the numbers using this

https://en.fontke.com/font/47658601/preview/

The vintage Rolex open 6 & 9 is some of my favorite numbers. Also, flat top 3.