Most typography apps let you look at type โจ๏ธ. This one lets you measure ๐ it. Photograph real
lettering wherever you find it โ a carved shopfront, a painted fascia, a street sign, a page of
a book ๐ โ and lay four type โจ๏ธ-lines and a stroke caliper directly onto your own photo ๐ธ. The bench
reads the specimen's true x-height ratio, cap proportion, stroke contrast and stress axis off
the image ๐ผ๏ธ, classifies it against the Vox-ATypI system with an honest confidence figure, and
ranks which of the bundled typefaces come closest. Every capture is kept as a numbered entry in
a personal field collection ๐, with its full metric card, so you can compare โ๏ธ two inscriptions
side by side and watch ๐ which of the eleven classes you have found in the wild.
At the centre of the app ๐ฑ is the Spacing Comb: a test word set live in your chosen face, with a
draggable comb in every letter gap and a rhythm strip beneath showing the negative-space volume
of each gap as a bar. The goal ๐ฏ is not equal gaps โ it is an even rhythm, because a round letter
already gives space away and an open or diagonal one gives more. When you judge your attempt,
targets derived from the shape-class relationships in Walter Tracy's control-word method slide
each comb into place, and you are scored in per-mille of an em. A kerning bench does the same
for the classic problem pairs, with practice ๐๏ธ, timed sweep and audit modes.
Around those sit real typographic tools ๐ ๏ธ rather than decoration: a letter-anatomy explorer with
34 named parts and a tap ๐-the-part quiz โ, a Vox classification reference over a forty-face metric
catalogue with live range filters and an identification drill, a modular-scale calculator ๐งฎ whose
ladder is rendered at the actual computed sizes, a readability solver that works out characters
per line from each family's real average ๐ character width and recommends leading to match, a
pairing bench scoring two faces across five metric relationships, and a specimen-sheet builder
that combines a bundled family with one of your own photographed captures.
It is for anyone who sets type โจ๏ธ and wants a better eye for it โ designers, letterers, sign
painters, students and the sort ๐ of person who photographs shop lettering. Everything is
measured, scored and stored on your own device ๐ฑ, and the whole bench works offline ๐ด. An eye
record tracks accuracy per skill over time โฑ๏ธ, surfaces the pairs you keep getting wrong โ, and
sends you straight back into a drill for just those.
Most typography apps let you look at type โจ๏ธ. This one lets you measure ๐ it.