The readability of any test is very often determined to a fairly high degree by the font used to write it. Many users do not want to be content with what modern fonts offer and try to create their own fonts. However, there are many problems in the process, if you do not take into account some important points. Creating your own beautiful font is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. Therefore, we will try to consider some of the nuances associated with this painstaking work.

How to create a beautiful font: problem statement

First of all, on initial stage you should clearly define your main goals. Whether a font will be created for academic publications, for comics or entertainment projects - this largely determines the main stages of work.

Next, you should decide how exactly the created font should look and whether it will fit into future project(sans serif font, characters with regular geometry, finally, whether the font will be based on the designer's own handwriting), how well it will look in long documents, and not just in headings.

Naturally, one should take into account how the characters will be visually perceived when magnified. It is also worth paying attention to in the whole document. Of course, some simple program can be used to change the font of an existing one, but most experts do not recommend using other fonts as a basis, because if you want to achieve originality, such tools are not suitable for work (except perhaps only for understanding the basics of editing).

First stage

Creating sans-serif letters is considered more difficult, so it’s better to start with a cursive font. A program to create a font from your handwriting can be used in the later stages, and at the very beginning it is recommended to draw a few characters by hand, and then make some combination of them and see how it looks in the general plan.

This approach allows you to immediately assess many shortcomings, because handwriting can be very specific and highly individual, and not all readers of future texts will be able to read it. Uncomfortable reading can simply push away a potential reader.

In the very simple case you can even just take photos for the letters, and then make words or combinations from them (on a computer or manually from natural pictures).

First letters

Computer processing and programs for creating fonts do not need to be implemented immediately. You should start by creating two, as it is believed, main letters. These are uppercase Latin letters "n" and "o", and capital ones - "O" and "H".

Some experts in this field recommend using the combination "adhension" (or "adhencion"). It is believed that the creation of sequences of these particular characters by hand in the early stages of developing a future font allows you to fully understand the geometry and proportions of each letter, number or symbol.

In the future, this will simplify the task of drawing symbols already in a computer program. But initially it is better to draw them manually, because without certain knowledge on a computer it will be quite problematic to create smooth lines or transitions.

Font Makers: Transferring a Font to Your Computer

But, let's say the font has been created, and so far no specific program has been used to create it. The next step is to transfer the font to a computer environment. Needless to say, this will require a scanner and appropriate software.

And for these purposes, you can use many applications, however, all those who have come across such software packages, as a rule, recommend using Adobe Illustrator - a program that is universal in all respects. It is advisable to first paint over the drawn characters with a bright marker, and then also make a border with a pen to smooth out the shapes.

But after all, not all novice designers have practical skills in working with this application, since the program itself for beginners is considered quite difficult to master. Therefore, a high-quality, although not new, application called FontLab Studio is perfect.

Despite being somewhat outdated, the application has quite a few professional-level modules in its arsenal, including Bizet's drawing tools, glyph viewers in two-dimensional space, and not just in horizontal planes, all sorts of automatic converters and font mergers. In addition, this software product supports most well-known font formats (TrueType, ASCII Unix, Open TrueType, Mac TrueType), as well as designs created using the same Adobe Illustrator in BMP, AI, TIFF, EPS, etc. formats.

If you don't want to draw...

In such a situation, the BirdFont utility is perfect for the user - a small program for creating your own font, as they say, from scratch.

Despite its simplicity, the application has an excellent toolkit, where you can separately draw letters or symbols with reference to a geometric grid, create glyphs on top of existing images, automatically convert characters to vector form, advanced font import options and add metadata.

If you want to make a project based on your own handwriting, you can resort to using the FontCreator application. The program is quite easy to learn and has good capabilities not only for creating, but also for testing fonts, even when tied to a standard PCI keyboard with different layouts.

Font testing

Finally, the font is created and processed for further use. At the next stage, you should first pay attention to how the characters will look in one word, line, paragraph or in full text in terms of its readability.

In addition, it is worth trying to change the size of the text and evaluate how well it looks in different options scaling. Almost all programs for creating fonts have such capabilities, but it's better to just print the text and see for yourself. A sheet with printed text in different sizes can be hung on the wall and viewed from a distance or close up to analyze the shortcomings. It is also desirable to send some text to acquaintances or friends so that they can evaluate the work, because the author, as a rule, has only his own, purely personal opinion and perception of what has been done.

What programs are better to use?

Now it remains to look at the most popular programs for creating fonts, which are mostly used and professional designers, and ordinary users. Among all the variety that is currently offered on the computer technology market, the following software products are worth noting separately:

• FontLab Studio;
• FontCreator;
• birdfont;
• fontographer;
• FontForge;
• Type 3.2 font editor;
• FontStruct;
• BitFontMaker2;
• fontifier;
• YourFonts;
• Glyphr;
• iFontMaker;
• FontArk;
• MyScriptFont etc.

In this list, you can find programs for creating fonts in Russian, free and paid utilities. And yes, they do differ quite a lot in terms of capabilities. So you will have to choose based on your own considerations, needs or testing applications in work.

Instead of total

As can be understood from all of the above, the process of creating your own font, on the one hand, looks quite simple (when using programs), and on the other, it requires imagination and perseverance. Here, the emphasis was specifically on developing your own font, rather than processing an existing one, since a creative approach on the part of a designer always looks more interesting than copying something that already existed. I would like to hope that these simple tips will help all beginners to comprehend all the stages in the development of their projects. Well, programs for creating fonts are a second matter. The main thing is the original idea of ​​the creator himself, so to speak, a creative approach to solving the problem. And this, as you know, is welcomed in the first place.

High school students and university students, often making homework have to do a lot of writing exercises. For example, our social studies teacher asks us each lesson a PD, which consists in finding material in the library or the Internet and writing it by hand (only for this you can get an “excellent” grade), even if the material found is correct, but printed out on a computer, don’t expect higher than four ...

Based on the foregoing, I came to the conclusion: I need to make a font for the computer that duplicates my handwriting. In my opinion, I did it successfully. My own mother will not distinguish where I wrote by hand, and where I typed a computer. Many of my friends liked this idea, and they began to ask me how I did it all. And in order not to explain to everyone a hundred times, I decided to write this article - a work plan with detailed comments.

So, in this article, I will tell you how to make a font that mimics your handwriting.

For work we need:
1) sheets blank paper in A4 format;
2) black gel pen;
3) printer;
4) scanner;
5) High-Logic FontCreator program (I suggest downloading from the official website of the program).
To download, click on the link provided.

1 step

Take a landscape sheet of paper and write on it all the letters of the Russian alphabet (lowercase and uppercase), numbers from zero to nine and punctuation marks: dot, comma, semicolon, colon, quotation marks, dashes, brackets, etc. If anyone needs, you can add other characters that will be useful to you when writing, such as @, #, $, #, ^,%, *, etc. Write beautifully, output each letter so that later all your work does not go down the drain.

2 step

Scan a sheet with written letters. And those people who managed to enter all the characters on one page will end up with one big picture.

3 step

Then we open the FontCreator program from the manufacturer High-Logic. Her window looks like this.

In the window that appears, you need to enter the name of your future font.

Click "OK" - a trace appears. window.

In this window, open a picture with your letters. Select the letter "A", copy it and go back to FontCreator, open the cell with the letter "F" and paste your letter there. The red dotted lines can be moved, arrange them as shown in the following figure.

The letter must be on the line (Baseline) and must NOT go beyond the upper horizontal line (WinAscent), and must NOT go beyond the lower horizontal line (WinDescent), otherwise it will be cut off. vertical left line should stand in the place where the letter begins, and the vertical right line where the letter ends. If the letter gets out of the vertical lines, then when printing, one letter will overlap with another, this also does not suit us.

Now I will explain why we inserted the letter "A" in the cell with the letter "F". This program is designed to create fonts using Latin letters. On the contrary, we need to make a font for Russian letters. Therefore, the RUSSIAN font made by us will turn out on the LATIN layout. In order to make it more convenient, we will insert Russian letters into cells with Latin letters, in accordance with the keyboard.

In the cell with the letter "Q" insert the letter "Y"
In the cell with the letter "W" insert the letter "C"
In the cell with the letter "E" insert the letter "U"
In the cell with the letter "R" insert the letter "K"
In the cell with the letter "T" insert the letter "E"
In the cell with the letter "Y" insert the letter "H"

After you arrange all the letters in the cells, you will get this picture.

Now you can test the resulting font. This can be done by pressing the "F5" key, or by going to "Font - Test ..."

If everything suits you, save the resulting font and place it in the "C:\WINDOWS\Fonts" folder. The font is installed and now you can select it, for example in Microsoft Word and print text to them. Below is the text printed in my font.

Instruction

Click the Create New font" (for the English version - "New").

In the top line, select "Insert" - "Characters". In the Fonts line select font Arial or Times New Roman. Find the index of the first "A" font and (if you plan to create font, then, respectively, "A", select Russian), which will be displayed when you select a character in the Selected Character field. The same way find the index of the letter "I" (or Z for font a).

In the "Add these character" field, enter these two numbers separated by a "-" sign (for example, "$0310-$034F"). The template is ready.

Draw your own set of symbols in Photoshop, save each letter in a separate graphic file. You can also need on paper, then scan, and save them in Photoshop as separate files.

Select the appropriate template in the Font Creator and click on the "Import Image" item. Select the "Load" item, and open the folder in which you saved the letters.

Adjust the letter settings in the appropriate fields (Threshold and beyond). After making all the settings and importing letters, press the "Generate" button.

Double click on the square with the letter. Adjust all indents using the corresponding lines that will appear on the display (using the mouse). The bottom line is responsible for adjusting the maximum limit for letters with additional elements(c, y, h). The second line from the bottom will serve as a support for the letter. The third from the bottom is responsible for small letters, and the fourth - the height of large letters and numbers. The fifth line points to the edge line of the top row.

note

Creating and rendering high-quality custom font takes a lot of time.

Sources:

• typewriter font

Tip 2: How to make changes to Photoshop's font set

By default, the text tool of the graphical editor Adobe Photoshop uses all fonts installed in the operating system of the computer. Therefore, the easiest way to add new fonts to the list is to install them using standard OS tools. However, this is not the only way.

Instruction

In modern versions of Windows, installing a new font is very easy using File Explorer. Start the procedure by launching this application - press the key combination Win + E, select "Computer" in the main menu, or double-click the icon with the same name on the desktop.

Then navigate through the File Explorer directory tree to the folder where the font file that you want to add to Photoshop's font list is stored. Such files most often have the extension ttf or otf, and clicking on them with the right mouse button brings up a context menu in which there is an “Install” item. Select this command and the font will be added to the set operating system and applied applications, including a graphics editor. Depending on which tool was currently active in Photoshop, updating the list of fonts may require restarting it, or simply switching to another tool (such as Brush) and back again (Text).

You can replenish the list of Adobe Photoshop fonts without installing fonts into the operating system. To do this, you need to place the file with the new font in a special folder on the computer's system disk, automatically created by the graphical editor during installation. This is also most convenient to do using the "Explorer" - run it, go to the directory with the new font file and copy it (Ctrl + C).

Then go to the system drive and in the directory called Program Files expand the Common Files subdirectory, and in it the Adobe folder. This folder contains a separate Photoshop font repository called Fonts - open it and paste the copied file (Ctrl + V).

Removing any font from the list of the graphic editor is done in a similar way - you need to either uninstall the font from the operating system, or remove it from the Adobe native fonts folder specified in the previous step.

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For employees of design companies or for individual designers, an outstanding one is almost always required. Depending on the wishes of the client, the main emphasis is still placed on individuality in the execution of the work.

Of course, with a huge number of non-standard fonts, which can be thousands on disks or downloaded from , creating a font seems like a waste of time. But it can take even longer to find the right font online, and store-bought font sets on disk may not be suitable for the project at all. Unfortunately, there are too many bad fonts.

Many aspiring designers want to create their own typeface. This is commendable, because. helps to develop a sense of style and individuality. Another thing is that this path cannot be easy on. If the user is faced with such a task for the first time, then you can purchase a special computer program to create a full-fledged font. The most famous of them are, of course, Photoshop, as well as Illustrator, Flash, Corel and many others. But such programs are very expensive.

In such a situation, you can go the other way - or rather, the proven traditional one. You can draw "" the required font using colored pencils, paints, felt-tip pens, and then digitize it using special programs. At first glance, such an idea seems to be an anachronism in the age of global computerization. But drawing the required text on paper, the designer will immediately see how it will be on printed materials (booklets, postcards, packaging, etc.).

If the user has artistic skills, then creating a font on his own is not special difficulties. Executed in a similar way (digitized). It is possible that after scanning it will need to be processed a little, for example, to remove halftones. For this, you can choose free utilities with which the user can make adjustments. In addition, utilities can automatically recognize minor defects and make the necessary adjustments to the drawing. The font is then imported in Tiff or Bitmap format into a font-in-curves program.

Keeping up with the times, you can draw a font with a special pen (stylus). Included with the tablet, developers often put a disc with special programs, allowing you to create a full-fledged font based on the user's work, as well as correct it or modify existing ones using the font editor.

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Sources:

• font creation in 2018

In the File Explorer menu, open the "File" section and select "Install Font".

As a result, a dialog box will open in which you need to select the drive and folder in which the installed font is placed (double-click the folder). The program will scan the specified folder and in the "List of fonts» A list of found titles appears. Choose among them the desired fonts. You can select multiple fonts placed in different parts list - for this you need to click each next one while holding down the CTRL key. And you can select a group placed between two lists - to do this, you need to click the first font of the group, then scroll the list to the last one and click it while holding down the SHIFT key. If you uncheck the checkbox that says "Copy fonts to the Fonts folder", they will remain in the same place, and if not, copies will be created in the system folder, and you can delete the original files.

Sources:

• In this lesson we will learn how to install additional fonts.

The authors of many lessons on Adobe Photoshop use the English names of the buttons, commands and functions of the program in the description process. In this regard, sometimes the question arises - how to make the text of the Photoshop interface English?

Instruction

If you first installed English version programs, and then put the crack on top, then you can use the following method. Launch Adobe Photoshop, click the menu item "Editing" > "Preferences" > General. In the window that appears, select "Interface", in the "User Interface Text Options" field, find the "Interface Language" item, specify "English" in it and click the "OK" button in the upper right corner of the menu. If you try to change this setting by initially installing the Russian version of Adobe Photoshop, then nothing will work: the only option in the "Interface Language" setting will be only Russian. In this case, you can use another method.

Close the program and open Windows Explorer and navigate to the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Locales\en_RU\Support Files directory. Keep in mind that instead of the C drive and the CS5 version, there may be other options in your case, depending on where the program was installed and what its version is. Create a new folder in this directory, which can be given any name. AT this case leave the default name - "New Folder".

Find a file called tw10428, it is responsible for the Russification of the program. Cut and paste it into the folder you just created: right-click on the file, select "Cut", right-click on the folder icon and select "Paste". Open Adobe Photoshop and enjoy the English interface. Keep in mind that in earlier versions of the program, for example, in CS2, a similar operation will also have to be done with the tw12508. Together with tw10428, it will be located in the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit)\Required directory.

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note

If you need to return the Russian language to the program, do the reverse: cut the tw10428 file from the "New Folder" and paste it again into C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Locales\ru_RU\Support Files.

Creating your own unique font is interesting not only for designers and developers, but also for ordinary Internet users. You can find several software tools for this purpose on the net - both professional and amateur.

The technology for improving the quality of screen fonts using the Microsoft ClearType anti-aliasing method in some cases has the opposite effect - the clarity of texts becomes unacceptable. This may be due to both the individual characteristics of the user's vision (increased color sensitivity) and monitor settings (non-standard resolution, improper gamma correction, etc.). If you are not satisfied with the clarity of screen fonts, then try turning off or adjusting the ClearType settings.

Instruction

Start by right-clicking on the desktop background image if you are using Windows XP. Select the "Properties" line in the drop-down context menu, and the system will launch the component with settings related to the image on the screen. You can do the same through the Control Panel, which is opened by a link in the menu on the Start button. In the panel, select the "Appearance and Themes" section and click the "Display" link.

In the display properties window, select the "Appearance" tab and click on the "Effects" button. Next, you will have a choice: turn off font smoothing altogether or turn off ClearType anti-aliasing.

Uncheck the Apply the following screen font anti-aliasing method if you want to disable anti-aliasing entirely.

Leave the "Use the following screen font smoothing" checkbox checked, and select "Normal" from the drop-down list below if you choose to disable only ClearType technology.

Press the OK buttons on both open windows and the procedure will be completed.

If you have Windows 7 installed, start the procedure by pressing the win key or clicking the Start button. In the OS main menu that opens, enter the ClearType text in the "Search programs and files" field. In the search results, click the "ClearType Text Adjuster" link, and the system will launch the "ClearType Text Adjuster" component.

Uncheck the "Enable ClearType" box and click the "Finish" button.

If you decide to try other ClearType settings, instead of the previous step, click Next and follow the screen font smoothing setup wizard. When finished, close the window by clicking on the "Finish" button.

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Windows tools allow you to use external fonts to create documents and graphics in different styles. To set the desired character set, an automated interface is used, implemented in the system by default. To set the font, as on a typewriter, you will need to download the TTF file and copy it to the system directory.

Instruction

Download the typewriter font from the Internet. To date, there are several resources that allow you to download character sets stylized for different typewriters. Go to the site you like and download the desired file.

Usually fonts are delivered in RAR or ZIP archives. To install the character set, you will need to unpack this document. After the download is complete, right-click on the resulting file and select "Extract". Select the folder where you would like to unpack the character set in the window that appears and wait for the extraction procedure.

Once the extraction has been completed, navigate to the directory where the extracted font files were saved. Click on the TTF document and select the "Install" option. After the operation is completed, the required character set will be copied to the system.

If you have downloaded several typescript fonts, use the Fonts tool, which is located in the Start menu - Control Panel - Appearance and Personalization. By going to this section, you will see all the files installed on your system.

Select the typewriter character sets in the folder where you extracted the downloaded archive and move them to the Fonts tool window. After the operation is completed, all files will be installed and you can close the manager window.

Launch the program through which you edit and create documents. In the window, select the font to use and start typing. The installation of the typewriter character set is complete.

Helpful advice

If you do not like the downloaded file, you can use the "Fonts" tool. To do this, select the name of the unnecessary character set and click on the "Delete" button located at the top of the window. After clicking on the button, unnecessary fonts will be permanently removed from the system and will not appear in the programs you use.

Sources:

• Typescript fonts

When typing a test, creating a program interface or website pages, it is sometimes necessary to make all text or a certain fragment of it transparent. The transparency of text on a computer is very conditional and is implemented in different programs according to the same principle. The implementation of the principle can be considered using the Microsoft Word program as an example.

You will need

• Basic computer skills.

Instruction

First, pay attention to the background color on which you plan to type your text. Find out the code for this color. To do this, in the main menu of the program, select "Format", in the submenu that appears, hover over the line "Background", then select the line "Other colors". In the window that appears below the spectrum, the code of the selected color is registered. You need to memorize or write it down.

Next, open the line "Format" in the main menu, then - " Font". In the window that appears with the properties of the font, activate the tab " Font". In it, click on the color selection bar (under the "Text color" line), then select the "Other colors" line. In the color selection window that appears, enter a previously known background color code. After that, the text will merge with the background, that is, it will be transparent .

Helpful advice

To see transparent text, simply select it.

Uncomfortable small font - very actual problem for people with low vision. Indeed, a small font size makes the user strain his eyesight, it becomes impossible to perceive information, and using a computer causes discomfort.

Instruction

If the small screen resolution causes discomfort, then you should set the necessary parameters in its settings. Enter the desktop menu, to do this, right-click on an empty space and select the "Desktop Properties" menu item.

You will be offered a choice of fonts in three sizes with sample letters. Check the box next to "Large Font". Click the "Apply" button.

If the changes do not suit you, return to the previous tab again and select other options by increasing the font to Extra Large. Click the "Apply" button again.

If you are not satisfied with the font in text editor, you need to enter the menu item "Fonts". You can do this either on the page control panel or by right-clicking on the page. Select the desired font from the dropdown list.

If you do not need to change the font in the document, but need to increase the page resolution on the screen, use the "Scale" tab in the "View" menu. By clicking on the indication of the "% to real resolution" icon, assign the desired page parameters.

All browsers also provide the ability to change the font size. To do this, in the settings, enter the "View" menu, open the "Page" section, then the "Scale" subsection. Select right size font. In some browsers, this function is duplicated in the form of hot keys CTRL and "+". They must be pressed at the same time. You can also increase or decrease the font size by pressing the CTRL key while scrolling the mouse wheel.

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Adam Savage. At the beginning of the day, he only has materials, and at the end he becomes the owner of something that he wanted.

So I challenged myself to create a brand new font from scratch and submit it to Google Fonts in 24 hours.

In an old notebook, I had sketches of several letters. I wanted to create a narrow sans-serif font that could be used on posters or other large images. During my time at Men's Health, I used typefaces like Tungsten or Heron that look awful in copy but look great in headlines or promos (which was my main job). It was the style that I wanted to create.

Very rough sketches

13:00 Wednesday

I went to Adobe Illustrator with two or three letters that I had in my sketches. I created a grid of five lines - for the descender line, the baseline, the lowercase line, the uppercase line, and the ascender line. Then I determined the width of the uppercase letters and the thickness of the main stroke.

I've read a lot about letter proportions and measured some existing fonts to determine what ratio should exist between uppercase and lowercase letters. I made up a few rules:

• Line height = 2 × line-height of ascenders / line-height of descenders
• Base Stroke Width = ¼ Capital Letter Width
• Lowercase letter width = ¾ uppercase letter width

Here's what it looks like in the illustration

First, I created the letters O and B. I decided that these letters would not have an oval shape, but a rounded corner shape. Many letters will look like a tall rectangle, but O, B and D will have rounded corners instead of ovals.

The outer corner has a radius of 12 mm, and the inner corner has a radius of 6 mm. With these rules, I started creating capital letters.

My font was very simple, but with one "decoration". Any aperture, that is, a cut of the ends of a semi-oval, had to be cut at an angle. The most difficult letters were G and K.

Then I moved on to lowercase letters. It was more difficult, but established rules work was easier. I used more "decorations", especially in the upper and lower callouts. The most difficult letters were f, g, a and e, as they were completely new.

21:00 Wednesday

I moved on to other symbols such as exclamation marks and question marks. I started working faster and managed to create about 35 signs.

Thursday morning

In the morning, I finished the numbers from 0 to 9 pretty quickly and started creating a font file. It was a completely new experience. My calligrapher friend Ian Barnard advised the Glyphs program for this. I downloaded the program, watched a few tutorial videos, and realized that I created the file incorrectly in Illustrator. Therefore, I had to insert each character manually and fit it to the rules of the program.

10:00 Thursday

I started doing spacing and kerning. It was terribly long. Before you do this, you need to master the many keyboard shortcuts in the program. And before kerning, you need to make the spacing as close as possible to what you want to end up with. To do this, you need to measure the width of the hole in the letter O and divide it by three. Such an interval should be placed to the left and right of the letter.

11:00 Thursday

With spaced intervals, I proceeded to kerning. It became a very painful process. First, I went to this site and inserted my font into their text for kerning.