How quantum.observer got a mark and a typeface
I wanted a space and an identity away from my professional life, so I made a GitHub account under a pseudonym, bobbyquantum. Then I wanted somewhere on the web to link to, and a custom email address.
The name isn’t really about quantum theory. It’s more about a small part of me that exists independently. Like all names, though, it can mean a lot of things.
After a lot of hunting for domain names I noticed quantum.observer, and it jumped out at me. The observer effect and the other quantum connotations were part of it, and it just seemed nice. For a long time I didn’t do much with it, apart from using it as a convenient entry point to some home lab systems.
Recently it felt like it needed a logo. That led to the mark you see at the top of this page: two circles, each one’s centre sitting on the other’s edge, tilted 45°, with the overlap filled in. The Q’s tail runs from its own centre to the far edge of the second circle.
Vesica
Once the mark existed, the wordmark needed a Q that matched it, and no font had one. So I drew a whole typeface, built from the same two circles set one radius apart. That overlap shape is a vesica piscis, Latin for “fish bladder”, which is where the name comes from.
A handful of shapes do most of the work. The overlap of two stacked circles makes the a, n and r. Two circles side by side make an upright eye, and running a stroke flat, round the eye’s edge and flat again makes the S, the bowls of b, d, p and q, and the C and G. Half an eye makes the V, W and M, and the N’s diagonal is two arcs bowing opposite ways.
It comes in Light, Regular and Bold, with 88 characters so far. There’s no ampersand and there are no accented letters yet. It’s free under the SIL Open Font License, and fonts.quantum.observer has a tester, the full character set and the code to use it on your own site. The source is on GitHub.
This site is set in it too.
15 Oct · 0.15.1 fixes letters like b, d and 0 filling in solid on Firefox for Android.