Eau de Garamond — a sans distilled from the essence of Garamond

A few years ago, I was first hit by the creative urge to make a faithful sans companion to Garamond — not just another humanist sans tipping its hat to the old master, but a sans that really was Garamond. I was going to distill the pure essence of Garamond. Unfortunately, my skills weren't up to the task back then (Typophile veterans might remember).

Now, after completing a display Garamond (Cormorant) and a sans (Quinoa), I feel confident enough to try again.


My current plan is to start with a low-contrast family that starts with the monolinear «essence» for large display sizes on the light end of the spectrum grows into a robust text-capable workhorse at heavier weights. I'm working with these two masters — Hairline and Bold — and adding a third, intermediate master via the brace trick in Glyphs wherever necessary (for instance, to restrict the strong thinning of shoulders to the heavy weights).

Beyond that, my stretch goals are:

• An Italic.
  
• A high-contrast family branching off the same Hairline master, but with a new Bold master. First experiments (see below) seem promising.
• Adobe Latin 4 and Cyrillic coverage.
• If I can pull it off, a third master (Black) for heavy weights beyond Bold. Not sure if the æsthetics of the essence would survive that ordeal, though.
  

Now, since I will base this project off the existing chassis of Cormorant, I am bound by contract to release this typeface under the Open Font License as well. Unfortunately, Google Fonts has apparently spent all its budget for commissioning new typefaces this year, so I can't get funding through that channel anytime soon.

Dave has suggested getting some crowdfunding from Kickstarter, though. Do you think that could work? It has worked for other typefaces in the past...  (Though from what I can see, the successful projects are significantly smaller in financial scope than what Google pays...)  Do you have any experiences with Kickstarter yourself? Can you recommend it?