have any of you created your own fonts? it's something i'm interested in but i have no idea how to go about it. can you recomend any good "how to" books, tutorials, websites?
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creating fonts
- Thread starter designingdani
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I've created my own fonts before using Fontographer (FOG) when it was still owned by Macromedia, I'm not sure what changes occured since it was bought out by FontLab.
For fontographer it's dead easy to create your fonts. Once you open a new document:
- Begin drawing your characters. Since it's a vector program you'll be familiar with the pen tool, selection tools, etc.
- or import images of each character to trace out (this is extremely useful)
- Open up your kearning table and start adjusting values. All this is done in real-time and using the actual fonts so if you type in "AV" all you need to do is drag the "V" to the desired position beside the "A".
- Export the fonts
TIP: When creating rounded-bottom characters such as "O", "C", "p", etc. position them slightly below the baseline. Otherwise these characters will look like they're floating slightly higher then the rest even though, mathematically, they're on the same baseline.
and you're done
It also will allow you to open any exisitng fonts you have and edit them. But it kinda gets into muddy copyright issues if you do this. I've only done this as a reference to kerning.
It's been a while since I used the program but that is essentially what to do.
Hope that helps. For more detailed tutorials I'm sure if you google "font creation tutorial" you'll end up with tons of examples. Or there is a Visual Quick Start guide to Fontographer than you can pickup (those are usually helpful in getting you started).
For fontographer it's dead easy to create your fonts. Once you open a new document:
- Begin drawing your characters. Since it's a vector program you'll be familiar with the pen tool, selection tools, etc.
- or import images of each character to trace out (this is extremely useful)
- Open up your kearning table and start adjusting values. All this is done in real-time and using the actual fonts so if you type in "AV" all you need to do is drag the "V" to the desired position beside the "A".
- Export the fonts
TIP: When creating rounded-bottom characters such as "O", "C", "p", etc. position them slightly below the baseline. Otherwise these characters will look like they're floating slightly higher then the rest even though, mathematically, they're on the same baseline.
and you're done
It also will allow you to open any exisitng fonts you have and edit them. But it kinda gets into muddy copyright issues if you do this. I've only done this as a reference to kerning.
It's been a while since I used the program but that is essentially what to do.
Hope that helps. For more detailed tutorials I'm sure if you google "font creation tutorial" you'll end up with tons of examples. Or there is a Visual Quick Start guide to Fontographer than you can pickup (those are usually helpful in getting you started).
shecky
Guest
just to add to what the last poster said, the making part of typeface creation is a pretty simple process especially if you are good with the pen tool in illustrator. Typetool or Fontlab works well and i think they have a free trial you can mess around with.
the design part of typeface creation is extremely difficult and takes a long time to do well. you need to be working at both a micro and macro level and be highly attenuated to both to do it well.
the design part of typeface creation is extremely difficult and takes a long time to do well. you need to be working at both a micro and macro level and be highly attenuated to both to do it well.
I totally agree your statement that making a font is the easy part, design is hard. I had mounds of sketches and paper all over the place when working out my fonts. It took a long time to even get to the digital part.
"Hamburgerfons" was my friend!