What do you look for in a writing font?

[kmwallio]

I've been looking at and testing a bunch of different writing fonts. I purchased MonoLisa and Operator Mono. I tried Victor Mono, Fira Code, Source Code Pro, San Francisco, and even tried mixing together some just to see how they'd feel.

Fira Code + iScript, Fira Code + Victor Mono

I found myself returning to iA Writer Duospace for writing. After using other fonts though, iA Writer Duospace did seem a little too mechanical.

I started tweaking some of the characters for my liking. What I liked from MonoLisa and Fira Code was the curve of the characters. The 'a', 'f', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'r', 't', 'w' and 'y' were adjusted to be smoother.

Using Operator Mono, I liked the visual distinction between Roman Characters and Italics. Victor Mono has beautiful Italics that I wanted to steal.

I didn't want to keep this for myself, so we're releasing Stolen Victory Duo for download and improvements.

The differences from iA Writer Duospace are minor, but I think Stolen Victory Duo is slightly more inviting. Here are some comparisons:

Through conversations on reddit and other social media, we've heard people want more of a visual difference in markdown formatting. Victor Mono's italics have the curvature, smoothness, and readability we liked.

Font choices are a personal thing. I know not everyone will like this new font. If you are a fan of our new font remix, let us know what we can improve on. I wish we had more story around a design language or special math, but we're just taking what we have and stealing what we like to make a font that's digitally authentic with human approachability.

If we have any new adventures into font thievery, let us know what you write with or what you look for in a writing font? Mono-space, variable width, serif/sans-serif/mixed?