Lower Case T's

Today's post is entirely devoted to one letter of the alphabet. Actually, to be more precise, it is devoted to one lower case letter of the alphabet: the letter T.

I came up with the idea for this post because I noticed that two fonts I've used lately have very distinctive lower case T's. And I like one T more than the other. Here are the two T's:

The first T is in one of my favorite fonts, Coolvetica. And the second on is in Theano Didot, a serif font I used on my inspiration series headers. These two letters are very different. I'll give a little description of each.

Coolvetica: This T is very bold, like the entire font. The horizontal line near the top is a bit narrower than the rest of the letter, but not much. The letter has a pretty uniform width. It is also made up of basic lines and curves at 90 degree angles. The letter more or less forms a rectangle. I really like how the horizontal line ends at the exact same point the curve does. Overall, this T is unique. It's nontraditional. It looks funky and retro, which I really like.

Theano Didot: Being this is a serif font, the lines are less uniform in width. This isn't necessarily bad, but it makes for a different look than Coolvetica. The curve, instead of being all the same width, gradually gets narrower towards the end. Also, it extends further than the horizontal line on top does. The top of the vertical line gets wider, which is one thing I really don't understand. The other varying widths look fine and characteristically serif-y, but the wider top of the T seems unnecessary. Also, the top of the T has a weird little ditch in it which is just weird.

So overall, I have to say that Coolvetica's lower case T gets a better ranking in my mind than Theano Didot's does. It has more good elements and no weird things like the wider top part with the ditch. But another thing I like about Coolvetica is how the T fits in with the rest of the font:

It does seem to stick out a little because of it's unusual composition, but because of the consistent width that it shares with all the other letters, it sticks out in a whimsical way instead of a garish way.

Take a look at how the T in Theano Didot mixes with other characters:

Overall, the lower case T's shortcomings are not horribly obvious, but the ditch in the top of it does look strange to me. Other characters don't have those ditches in them, which makes the lower case T obvious. Most of the other letters are very normal, uniform, and well designed, so the T is rather confusing to me.

If you've read this far, thank you for bearing with my this nerdy typophile. I'd love to know what you think of these lower case T's!