LGBTeX

It started with a simple question:

Has anyone done a TeX style typographic logo for LGBTQ+ ? That must be a thing, right?

No one answered, but it got a few stars and reposts.

For those who aren’t as inconsolably nerdy as I am: TeX is a computer typesetting system developed by Donald Knuth in the 1970s. It has been in continuous use ever since, and is still the standard for papers in math and computer science.

TeX has its own typographic logo, consisting of the letters “T E X” arranged with manual kerning and vertical offsets. Tools built on top of TeX have their own variations: LaTeX, BibTeX, and so on.

I was doodling in a notebook recently when it occurred to me that the letters of LGBTQ+ could be arranged in a similar fashion. In particular, L and T both have space for kerning.

I’ve never been a heavy user of TeX, but I know the basics. I found the some examples on StackOverflow and just started playing around with positioning.

I posted a first draft on Mastodon where it got a couple hundred likes and reposts, so I figured it was worth doing a second draft. The image at the top of this page is the updated version.

Typography is a matter of taste — especially kerning — and my preferences may not align (no pun intended) with others’. I am not a typography expert, merely an enthusiastic amateur.

For what it’s worth, here is the result of my amateurish tinkering. Soure code and other formats (PDF, transparent PNG) are on GitHub at lambdasierra/lgbtex. I have released it as CC0.

A Minor Adjustment

Originally, I placed the Q on the same baseline as L and T. This left the right arm of T crossing over the loop of Q. I liked this, and thought it was consistent with the original TeX and LaTeX logos.

On further examination, I noticed that none of the letters in TeX and LaTeX actually cross, they only just touch.

I experimented with shifting Q to the right, so that the arm of T would touch rather than cross it, but I felt there was too much empty space between Q and the bottom serif of T.

Instead, I decided to lower the Q, which produces a similar gap between T and Q at both top and bottom. I think this looks more balanced overall.

Both versions are available on the GitHub releases page.