Creation of fonts in FontCreator. How to create your own font

A lot has been written about type design, especially the history of its creation. We have read about many techniques for creating fonts. But where exactly should you start? If you are a designer or illustrator and this discipline is new to you, where do you start?

We found useful information, which was collected from many sources, and decided to put everything together.

1. Start with a brief

Creating a font is a long and painstaking job, so it is very important to have a clear understanding of what this font should be.

Developing a brief will certainly require research and thought. How will your font be used: will it be for a specific project or for personal use? Is there a problem your font would solve? Will your font fit into an array of similar designs? What makes it unique?

There are many options. Fonts can be created, for example, specifically for academic texts or for posters. Only when you know how your font can be used are you ready to start designing.

2. Fundamental choice

There are a number of decisions to keep in mind. Will it be sans-serif or serif? Will it be based on handwriting or will it be more geometric? Will the font be made for text and suitable for long documents? Or maybe it will display text in a creative style and look better in large size?

Clue: It is assumed that the design of sans serif font is more difficult for beginners, since the possibilities of such fonts are more specific.

3. Pitfalls in the early stages

There are several pitfalls:

• You may decide to start by computerizing handwriting, which can be a useful practice exercise. But because handwriting is so individual, your typeface might not do well because of its specificity.
• You should not take existing fonts as a basis. Reworking a font that is already familiar to everyone a little, you will not create a better font and will not develop your skills.

4. Use your hands

There is a lot of material on how to draw fonts with computer programs, but we strongly recommend that you draw it by hand first. Trying to do this on a computer will make your job much more difficult.

Try to create beautiful shapes the first few letters on paper, and only then start computer work. The following letters can then be constructed based on existing forms, according to key features.

Clue: By hand, you can usually draw smoother, more precise curves. To make it more convenient, don't be afraid to turn the sheet of paper the way you want.

5. What characters to start with

Creating certain characters first can help you style your font. Well, then these characters will be used as guides. Usually “control characters”, as they are called, in Latin are n and o, and capitals are H and O. Often the word adhension is used, which will help test the basic proportions of the font (but, some write this word as adhencion, because the letter s can be very tricky).

6. We transfer the font to the computer

There are many ways to transfer a drawing to a computer. Some recommend tracing programs, but many prefer to do this work manually so that they have full control over the points and shapes.

Many programs need a clear and bright drawing, so once you like your font, circle it with a fine pen and fill in the shapes with a marker.

Clue: If you have processed the drawn font as described above, then you can simply take a photo of the drawing and work with it.

7. Program selection

Many designers like to use Adobe Illustrator. For drawing individual shapes and experimenting, it is great. But later it becomes obvious that it is not suitable for creating fonts. You'll want to work with a program that lets you work with letter spacing and create words.

A great program is FontLab Studio, but newer software like Glyphs and Robofont are getting more and more popular. These programs are not cheap, but Glyghs has a “mini” version on Mac App Store with some missing features, which is not good because those features are important for beginners.

8. Use of programs

Don't forget to position the extreme points of the letter shapes (top, bottom, right, left) to better control the process.

9. Words

When you have finished all the smoothing of the shapes, see how it looks in full text. Make it your goal to analyze how the font looks in a line, paragraph, and so on. And don't wait until you make the whole alphabet.

One of the most popular font design software. Available on Windows and Mac.

The program is available on Windows, has an intuitive interface and is great for beginners.

Another powerful font editor from FontLab that allows you to create new fonts or modify existing ones. Available on Windows and Mac.

This program runs on Windows, Mac, Unix/Linux and has been translated into many languages. It also allows you to create new fonts and edit existing ones.

OpenType font editor, available on Windows and Mac OS X. Quite simple and contains a fair amount of features.

Another free tool with which you can create dot fonts.

A free trial ($9 per font download) online tool that lets you create fonts from handwritten text.

Another online tool (also almost $10 to download) that lets you create a font from handwritten text.

A free and fairly powerful font editor. Great for beginners and those who do not want to spend money on buying programs.

This app is available on iPad and Windows 8. It allows you to create a font from a sketch and edit existing fonts.

Free limited time tool. With it, you can create fonts and download them.

A free online tool that allows you to create TTF and OTF fonts from handwritten text.

There is a free and premium version. The program runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and BSD.

It seems to me that many of those who are passionate about drawing letters and creating lettering, at some point, the thought arises: why not turn all this beauty into a font? So that you can not only admire a specific composition, but type these beautiful letters on a real keyboard and create even more beauty ... Well, at least it was for me :) When I realized that I could create a font myself, I literally a revolution of consciousness (probably, this is exactly what is called “aha-moment” in English).

And I started trying to figure out how to do it. There was little information, and what was there was incomprehensible and complicated. I got lost in this dense forest of terms and almost abandoned the idea of ​​learning how to create fonts. But by some miracle she didn't give up, continued to try and made her first typeface Bronks - far from ideal, but very valuable in terms of experience. By the way, I already wrote about how the Bronx was created. And today I want to tell you in more detail about the process of creating a font in general, so that it would be easier for you to understand whether this is your occupation and whether it will be interesting for you to try.

FONT BEGINS WITH A BRIEF

DRAWING GLYPHS - BUSINESS OF THE DAY :)

Gathering my courage, that is, with inspiration, I usually wait for the moment when I have at least half a day free (ideally, a whole day) and sit down to draw glyphs. Glyphs are the characters of a font, both letters and numbers, and all those signs like plus, comma, question mark, and so on.

How wide I render a font - that is, how many glyphs I create - depends directly on the target audience. It is clear that the more glyphs - the more valuable the font, but at the same time there are glyphs that are worth spending time on, and there are glyphs that are not very good (for example, if you create a standard handdroon font for conditional small businesses, wide language support will be much more relevant than all-all-all mathematical signs, many of which, to be honest, I saw for the first time in the Glyphs program :)). In detail about which glyphs it is necessary to draw, and which additional ones and in what quantity, I will tell in the workshop about the creation of a font that I am working hard on (about it at the end of the note :)).

I can briefly say that I would advise you to make the first font simple and concise, otherwise, if you immediately try to make both the initial and final versions of the letters, and add the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet, then you simply won’t finish the font (and if you finish it, it’s unlikely that It will pay off, since you cannot do without mistakes in type design, the ability to see small blots and details that affect the quality of the font appears only with practice). Therefore, at first it is best to get by with the standard set A-Z, a-z, 0-9, basic punctuation.

Why do I allocate half a day to a day for font rendering? Because when you “catch a wave”, that is, you feel for a certain style, the atmosphere of a font, it’s better to draw everything in one go, while the hand is developed. This probably applies more to handwritten fonts (I haven’t tried others yet). If you set aside and try to draw the rest of the letters later, they are guaranteed to be different, and it will take time to "tune the hand" again and start to fall into the general style.

Font rendering is the most creative process of all. If you naively believe that the creation of fonts is all about creativity and a celebration of inspiration, I hasten to disappoint you: creativity and drawing letters take at most 20% (more often less) of the time it takes to create a font. The rest is technique: scanning, processing, shaping the alphabet, tuning, exporting to a program, spacing and kerning, code tweaks, testing, and so on. Therefore, if you only want to draw letters, and you are even bored of thinking about the technical part, then it is better to create lettering.

DIGITAL PART OF THE PROCESS

When the font is drawn, it's time to digitize it. My processing chain looks like this: scanner - photoshop - illustrator. In the scanner I set the maximum settings, in Photoshop I make the contrast higher and I clean the contours a bit, in Illustrator I do a trace, I find the alphabet (that is, I arrange the letters in sequence, I try to “collect” a few words to check how everything looks) and I clean-clean- I read letters.

About the cleaning stage - before it seemed to me that "why clean it, it's a handwritten font." But later, this detail was revealed: the more points in the vector, the more likely it is that the font will be buggy in every possible way - from Glyphs (or another program in which the font will be assembled) to refuse to export the file, to the impossibility of end users to use it without errors. Therefore, a minimum of dots is a guarantee of comfort, and yes, you still need to clean, even fonts with a texture.

I clean letters in illustrator in several ways: firstly, with a magic eraser from Astute Graphics (part paid plugin, about which I am), unfortunately I don’t know a free alternative of at least approximate quality, secondly, with a standard illustrator pencil, I highlight the outline and make it neater.

After that, I prepare the font for export - this is a separate big story, about which there will most likely be several videos - and I transfer the letters to Glyphs.

A GOOD TYPE PROGRAM IS IMPORTANT

Collecting a font, that is, turning vector letters into functioning ones, those that can be typed on the keyboard, is theoretically possible in different programs. If you google - you will find impressive lists of options for every taste and budget. I do not give names here, because I am not ready to recommend something that I do not know / have never tried. I work in Glyphs and all I know is that all serious type designers (the ones who sell fonts) make them either in Glyphs or Fontlab. This is most likely due to the fact that cheaper/free programs don't provide all the options you need to create interesting type stories.

At one time, I chose Glyphs because, on the one hand, I wanted to immediately get used to the “correct” type program (that is, one that can be used to create really thoughtful, complex, element-rich fonts, and not poke a month into some free only to later find out that you cannot create conditional ligatures there), on the other hand, I was not ready to pay several times more for Fontlab. Apparently, the choice was right - I know people who switched from Fontlab to Glyphs and say that the latter has a clearer interface :)

A good type program is important, because that's where the magical transformation of just letters into a functioning type takes place. If the program does not allow you to create language support, you will not be able to create it. If you can't add an alternate set of uppercase letters, then you won't be able to add them, even if you've already drawn them.

After exporting to Glyphs, I set up a lot of different things: letter groups, spacing (negative space to the left and right of the letters, if roughly), kerning (distances between specific pairs of letters), adding language support, ligatures (special variants of letter combinations), initial and final variants (with long tails-swashes-flourishes and here that's all) and alternative sets, if any. Along the way, the code is set up so that everything works for the end user as I intended, and without problems. This stage, which I described in a couple of sentences, is actually what takes about 70% of the time when creating a font :) And I briefly describe it, not because I'm greedy, but because you can write a note about three times longer than this, and it will still not be enough. In the course about fonts, I will dwell on all these points in great detail (just now I’m trying to find the line between “not enough detail” and “too much information to digest”).

A lot has been written about design articles, especially about the history of their creation. We have read about many techniques for creating fonts. But where exactly should you start?

If you are a designer or illustrator and this discipline is new to you, where do you start?

We found useful information that we collected from many sources, and decided to make a general review article.

1. Start with a brief

Creating a font is a long and painstaking job, so it is very important to have a clear understanding of what this font should be.

Developing a brief will certainly require research and thought. How will your font be used: will it be for a specific project or for personal use? Is there a problem your font would solve? Will your font fit into an array of similar designs? What makes it unique?

There are many options. Fonts can be created, for example, specifically for academic texts or for posters. Only when you know how your font can be used are you ready to start designing.

2. Fundamental choice

There are a number of decisions to keep in mind. Will it be sans-serif or serif? Will it be based on handwriting or will it be more geometric? Will the font be made for text and suitable for long documents? Or maybe it will display text in a creative style and look better in large size?

Hint: It is suggested that sans-serif design is more difficult for beginners, as the possibilities of sans-serif fonts are more specific.

3. Pitfalls in the early stages

There are several pitfalls:
– You may decide to start by computerizing handwriting, which can be a useful practice exercise. But because handwriting is so individual, your typeface might not do well because of its specificity.
- Do not use existing fonts as a basis. Reworking a font that is already familiar to everyone a little, you will not create a better font and will not develop your skills.

4. Use your hands

There is a lot of material on how to draw fonts with computer programs, but we strongly recommend that you draw it by hand first. Trying to do this on a computer will make your job much more difficult.

Try to create beautiful shapes of the first few letters on paper, and only then start computer work. Subsequent letters can then be constructed from existing shapes, according to key features.

Hint: By hand, you can usually draw smoother, more precise curves. To make it more convenient, don't be afraid to turn the sheet of paper the way you want.

5. What characters to start with

Creating certain characters first can help you style your font. Well, then these characters will be used as guides. Usually "control characters", as they are called, in Latin are n and o, and capitals are H and O. Often the word adhension is used, which will help test the basic proportions of the font (but, some write this word as adhencion, because the letter s can be very tricky).

6. We transfer the font to the computer

There are many ways to transfer a drawing to a computer. Some recommend tracing programs, but many prefer to do this work manually so that they have full control over the points and shapes.

Many programs need a clear and bright drawing, so once you like your font, circle it with a fine pen and fill in the shapes with a marker.

Hint: If you have processed the drawn font as described above, then you can simply take a photo of the drawing and work with it.

7. Program selection

Many designers like to use Adobe Illustrator. For drawing individual shapes and experimenting, it is great. But later it becomes obvious that it is not suitable for creating fonts. You'll want to work with a program that lets you work with letter spacing and create words.

An excellent program is FontLab Studio, but newer software such as Glyphs and Robofont are gaining more and more popularity. These programs are not cheap, but Glyghs has a "mini" version in the Mac App Store with some missing features, which is not a good thing because those features are important for beginners.

8. Use of programs

Don't forget to position the extreme points of the letter shapes (top, bottom, right, left) to better control the process.

9. Words

When you have finished all the smoothing of the shapes, see how it looks in full text. Make it your goal to analyze how the font looks in a line, paragraph, and so on. And don't wait until you make the whole alphabet.

This online tool will help you create text from the letters you already have.

10. Tests

It is very important to see how your font will look in different sizes. Following your brief, evaluate the resulting font, see if the text can be read if you set the font size to small.

You need to understand how your font will behave when you change its size. And yes, this can create a lot of problems, but you don't want to give a raw result.

11. Print

12. Think globally

So, you have created something that you are proud of. Did you make the font only for latin? But what about Cyrillic? But what about the 220 million Devanagari readers? The non-Latin market is growing.

13. More tests

Try applying your font to old projects and see what the text looks like. Give the font to your friends to test it and give their opinion. Well, or ask an experienced designer to give you his feedback.

Font creation tools

1 FontLab Studio

One of the most popular font design software. Available on Windows and Mac.

2.FontCreator

The program is available on Windows, has an intuitive interface and is great for beginners.

3. Fontographer

Another powerful font editor from FontLab that allows you to create new fonts or modify existing ones. Available on Windows and Mac.

4.FontForge

This program runs on Windows, Mac, Unix/Linux and has been translated into many languages. It also allows you to create new fonts and edit existing ones.

5. Type 3.2 Font Editor

OpenType font editor, available on Windows and Mac OS X. Quite simple and contains a fair amount of features.

6. Font Structure

7. BitFont Maker 2

Another free tool with which you can create dot fonts.

8.Fontifier

A free trial ($9 per font download) online tool that lets you create fonts from handwritten text.

9. YourFonts

Another online tool (also almost $10 to download) that lets you create a font from handwritten text.

10. Glyphe

A free and fairly powerful font editor. Great for beginners and those who do not want to spend money on buying programs.

11.iFont Maker

This app is available on iPad and Windows 8. It allows you to create a font from a sketch and edit existing fonts.

12.FontArk

Free limited time tool. With it, you can create fonts and download them.

13.MyScriptFont

A free online tool that allows you to create TTF and OTF fonts from handwritten text.

14. BirdFont

There is a free and premium version. The program runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and BSD.

Are you tired of the daily monotonous use of regular fonts? Or maybe you have some creative ideas for your own font and its style? If yes, then we want to tell you that since you are confident and creative enough, it's time to start visiting free sites where you can bring all your ideas related to fonts to life. Yes, that's right, because there are many resources for graphic designers on the Internet where you can design and design your own fonts. In the future, you can use them in your own projects or share with others. It’s worth noting that there is a huge demand for new and exciting types of fonts right now. Believe me, the graphic world just needs talented font developers, and if you are good at it, then you can also earn extra money on it.

We offer you a list of 10 free resources with tools where you can create and create new creative fonts.

Bird Font is an online tool for creating and editing vector graphics. The service offers import and export settings for True Type Font (TTF), Embedded OpenType Font (CRT), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). On the site you can explore many features and tools for creating various vector images. The most popular among them are curve orientation, contextual binding substitution, kerning, object rotation, background change, and much more.

The site is designed specifically for creating fonts and offers an efficient platform for font design. The resource will be useful for enthusiasts who like to experiment with fonts and create new types. On FontStruct, you can create fonts using various geometric figures such as tiles or brick mesh. In addition, here you can find ready-made new types of fonts. Fonts built on FontStruct are called FontStructions and can be installed or downloaded in a True Type Font (.ttp) file. They can also be used in Photoshop applications, Mac/Windows, or on websites and blogs. This is a site that is really worth paying attention to.

Glyphr Studio is a font design and editing software and a tool that offers many interesting features. On Glyphr Studio, you can create your own character ligatures and glyphs using various vector editing tools such as pen and pointer. One of its characteristic advantages of the service is the import of SVG code from Inkscape and Illustrator. The tool offers a dual screen mode for easy design and editing. Among other things, Glyphr Studio supports font files such as True Type Font (TTF), Embedded OpenType Font (EPB), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) font files.

The site is a browser-based tool for designing and editing bitmap fonts. The service allows you to download or upload fonts to their gallery in a True Type Font file.

MyScriptFont is a great online tool for creating vector fonts from your own handwriting. All you have to do is download the template at PDF format or PNG and then print it. Next, write the text in it by hand, scan and upload to the site (the program supports JPG, PNG, PDF and others). You can also use Paint to write text. Unlike other similar tools, MyScriptFont allows you to view and download your handwritten font in Open Type and True Type formats for free. Handwritten fonts can be used in graphic programs, greeting cards, logos, personal letters and more.

FontForge is an online platform for creating free fonts. It has an easy to use user interface and a built-in program for comparing different fonts. With FontForge, you can create and edit fonts in a variety of formats, including PostScript, SVG, True Type, Open Type, and more. Also at your service full text textbook to help vocational training for creating fonts.

FontArk is what every font designer is looking for. Access to the service is only free for a limited time, but it's actually worth taking advantage of. FontArk is a browser-based program and a generation of font tools with a built-in fluid grid system. FontArk's design and editing tools are what sets the site apart from its contemporaries. It offers users real-time, multiple glyphs, character editing and font design tools, as well as logos. In addition, it offers many other features and supports multiple languages.

PaintFont.com is another great tool for converting handwriting to vector fonts. The site has an extensive set of pre-made characters categorized into categories such as ligatures, math, and punctuation. The tool offers glyphs and symbols from various languages: Japanese, German, Turkish, Hebrew, Spanish, and more.

You can create fonts or upload and modify your own using the custom tools at Fontastic. The service offers several features such as adding or changing colors, adding shadows, zooming, and syncing across multiple devices. The site also contains a huge collection of vector icons that can be used to integrate into any of your design projects. They are sorted into several categories for complete convenience.

This service can be called perfect place for professional designers fonts and just lovers. The service has more than 20 parameters that allow you to experiment with built-in glyphs. Also here you will find several editing and design functions that will be expanded in the future.

A few more resources you might find useful:

FontPunk.com is a free online styling and visual effects tool to create a visually appealing font for an advertisement, flyer or website.

FontConverter.org is a free online font file converter.

Font Squirrel is a free online resource with a collection of web fonts that are licensed for commercial use.

Conclusion

Now you know that developing your own fonts is very easy if you have the right resources. For the self-taught and hobbyist, these resources are useful for learning practical skills such as kerning, curve tuning, exploring structural variations, and glyph assembly.

Decoration is a boundless ocean, growing every day. New font types are created daily every day or by making custom changes to already existing fonts. Fonts enhance the visual appeal of text content, which is why designers are constantly looking for new font styles to make their work as fresh and innovative as possible.

There are hundreds of different fonts freely available on the Internet, including exotic and handwritten ones, but even such an abundance of them will be completely useless if you need a font that mimics your own handwriting. The reasons why such an imitation may be needed may be different, but the point is not so much in the reasons, but in how to implement it.

It turns out that it is very simple. For this you need a program High-Logic FontCreator and a little perseverance and patience.

Before proceeding to the description of the process, let me say a few words about the . This program is intended for creating and editing fonts. With it, you can update existing and add new characters, fix their markup, view and install fonts, fix incorrectly displayed fonts, and convert images to text.

Some useful information

So, install and run the program. Then select from the main menu file -> open -> Font File and open any Cyrillic font, previously copied to a folder convenient for you. FontCreator will parse and render its content in inner window, each cell of which will contain a certain character.

If you double-click on such a cell, the program will open the symbol in a small window that has a layout in the form of a grid with guides.

By grabbing the markers with the mouse, you can change the font size, its height and width, the angle of inclination, as well as the shape of the outlines themselves.

As for guides. FontCreator has seven of them: WinDescent, BaseLine, x-Height, CapHeight, WinAscent and two more unnamed vertical ones.

baseline- reference line of attachment, on which "costs" font.
CapHeight- determines the height of capital letters.
X-height- determines the height of lowercase letters. The exception is the lowercase letters of handwritten fonts, which have at the top "tail". The height of such characters is determined by the line CapHeight.
lines WinDescent and WinAscent serve to restrict characters that have additional elements, for example, a dash in "I" short or a tail in "Sch" or "r".
The unnamed vertical lines define the width of the character. There is one for each character.

We may not even suspect it, but all these lines count. text editors, thanks to which the letters in the text do not overlap each other, are not located one above the other, but stand exactly like trained soldiers on parade.

Create your own handwriting

Take a plain sheet of white A4 paper and write on it in a row all the letters (lowercase and uppercase), as well as all the symbols that you intend to use when printing. It is best to write with a black gel pen so that the characters on the sheet are clear and stand out well. Next, scan the sheet into an image format JPEG or PNG. If you have a device that supports stylus handwriting, use it.

Select the symbol on the image and copy the area to the clipboard. Next, we go to FontCreator, find the same character in the cell table, double-click to open it in the editor, select and press the Delete button, and insert our selected image area in its place (in the menu Edit -> Paste) .

The program recognizes the picture and converts it into an editable contour. Now it remains to scale the contour so that its top coincides with the line x-Height if it is a lowercase letter and with CapHeight if it is a capital letter. Snap to line baseline is done automatically. "Ponytails" letters "R", "at", "in", "b" bind to WinDescent or WinAscent respectively.

To avoid any overlays and make the handwritten font you created look natural, drag the right vertical guide to the rightmost point of the scaled character.

In the same way, we replace all the characters you need. The work may seem long and tedious to you, but the result is worth the effort. After all the characters have been replaced, we export the project to the desired font format and install it into the system.

The program used in the example High-Logic FontCreator is the best tool to create and edit fonts. Unfortunately it is paid and, when running in trial mode, does not allow you to export projects to ready-to-install font formats. But whoever seeks always finds. We believe that finding on the Internet, albeit not the most recent, but quite a working version, will not be difficult for you.