Are there typefaces designed to fit inside one another?

Question

Original Question

If so what are the names of these typefaces? What terms should I use to search for them?

My title was changed to use a term provided in a candidate answer below. Layered Typeface.

For the reader. As always you have the choice to read any portion, including near 0%, of the question and then quickly jump to the 2 answers. Some comments gave some other impression.

If none of the typefaces are suitable what are efficient means of creating bodies of text to emulate them? Note the caveat below. I want the paths of both larger and smaller. Ultimately this approach provides a better option for me on this project.

The final goal is to deliver the curves/paths in SVG export. I need the paths to control location in another program.

Ideal Situation

T1 and T2 are imagined typefaces. If I typed the same text with pair T1 and T2 with transparent background then I could see the background text lined up with the foreground text with no additional effort. Similar to an Inkscape Text Stroke. Illustrated in diagrams. A matching pair.

My initial preference is that the larger of the pair is the original. The smaller of the pair is the newly created. I am willing to delete path and curves. I do not want to create labor intensive artwork for a typeface.

Actual Situation

Above image from Inkscape.

• 01 Appearance of Layered Fitted typefaces or just curves. Inkscape text with stroke
• 02 Emphasis of stroke as a feature of one curve

• 03 Inkscape inset feature with less than stellar results. The results fail my goal for today. Many straight lines were destroyed. However I may be able to use Inkscape inset for some purposes.

• 04 Regular Black H

• 05 Inset Placed on Black H showing 50% successful situation.

Does Inkscape have another function similar that does what I want?

So the final visual bounding box is not determined by the curve alone, it requires the stroke. This does not support my goal. Another program in the pipeline does not have the stroke feature.

The accepted answer and some of what appears below may be slightly different alternatives. I still need to test. Eventually the accepted answer and my shallow description here converged ... to a large degree. I still need to ponder the answer below.

Some of my conversation with the Accepted Answer.

Inkscape Stroke to Path appears useful. It allows the thickness adjustments by replacing one sub path with two sub paths [1 -> 2 subpaths]... inner and outter. In another part of my pipeline it will be easier to discard the concept of stroke since another program does not have the same feature.

Figure 1-6.

• 01 Successful Red Smaller letter [H] on Original [H].
• 02 Regular Black H
• 03 Black [O] with Red Stroke just for discussion purposes.
• 04 Isolated thick Red Paths converted from Stroke feature. Used Inkscape features. Object to Path. Stroke to Path. See menu.
• 05 Kept the curves I need and deleted what I did not need
• 06 Place smaller red [O] on larger Black [O]. Curve edited to show independence.
• 07 The menu bar shows the choices
  • Object to Path
  • Stroke to Path

Thanks.

Answer 1

It is not very easy to find a font with these characteristics for typing a text.

For separate characters it is very simple, but the problem is if a letter fits into the same letter, this means that it's narrower, so the text of that font, if the kerning is well adjusted, will be narrower than the first one.

Layered Typefaces

I come up with geometric display type typographies with similar widths and more than one alternative design. Google search gives many options with Layered Fonts or Layered Typefaces.

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This interesting font design is called by its author Modular Design and comes with this demonstration video.

Idler Font

From hypefortype.com

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Another layered fonts:

Bank

From weandthecolor.com

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Elise

From myfonts.com

...copy your text block and paste it directly on top of your existing text block. Set this new text block to a different Elise layer and voila!

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Matryoshka

From myfonts.com

Answer 2

Don't know such typefaces, but you can try a workaround, a little the same as you already have tried

1. A piece of text with font (=Aharoni)

2. Convert the text to curves (Object > Object to Path), remove the fill, insert a stroke

3. Ungroup. Convert the stokes to filled areas (Object > Stroke to Path)

The resulted paths are quite complex combined paths, the holes in the letters are results of path combinations. Select the letters and apply Path > Break apart to separate the elements. Ungroup all to make all really separately editable

4. The separated areas are colored only for demonstration. None of them has holes.

5. The unnecessary shapes are deleted

6. Select all parts of one letter at a time and apply Path > Combine. That recreates the needed holes

The new letters are colored to orange and placed on the original black text (=1) to see the difference:

In illustrator one can work differently. There's a well working tool, "the Shape Builder", which can be used to fill the interior in image 3. It's like mold casting. Here's a cartoon of it:

The same is possible also in Inkscape. It has the Paint Bucket for the same purpose. Unfortunately it's not exact, only screen resolution. But it can be used, if you can zoom the text to several hundred pixels high. One letter at a time is enough.

If the case is = you want a computer font which fits exactly inside another font when one writes arbitary text, you must make them. There are many fully free fonts with can be legally edited as long as the license is honored, for ex. credit the original author and give a new new name. You must get a font editor, learn how to use it and then make a pair for some existing font.

You can use those tricks i have shown, many font editors accept imported glyphs and pasting them via the clipboard.

I see the biggest obstacle is to learn the details that must be well defined in the font editor - fonts are complex pieces of software! Fortunately many details can be taken as is from your starting font.