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, which was collected from many sources, and decided to make a general overview 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 first draw it by hand. 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 good because those features are important for newbies.
8. Use of programs
Don't forget to place extreme points 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.
In this topic, I will tell you in detail (step by step) how to make your own font.
To create your own font, you will need FontCreator 5.6 (maybe a different version).
Font Creator can be downloaded from the website - http://HotSoft.Net.Ru (installer with serial in rar file). The password for viewing files is the site name - HotSoft.Net.Ru.
After installing the program, enter the serial number - the program works!
Next stage:
- Click to create a new font (New)
- Give a name to your font (for example, Moy_shrift), check Unicode, Regular, and Don't include outlines (for a clean outline of silhouettes).
- A panel with silhouettes of punctuation marks and English letters appears in front of you. You need to insert Cyrillic into it. We proceed as follows:
1. Click on the top line Insert, select Characters.
2. Before you appears a table of symbols of the first font in your database, for convenience, in the Fonts line, select the Arial font.
3. Then scroll through the pages of the table with the Block→ button.
4. We find Russian letters, rejoice!!!
5. We look at the index of the first letter A (I have $0410) in the Selected Character field
6. We look at the index of the letter i (I have $044F)
7. In the Add these character… field, enter these numbers (example $0410-$044F).
8. Click Ok.
9. Your template has been updated with the appropriate Cyrillic silhouettes.
10. Also, you can separately insert the signs you are interested in (Yo, yo, etc.)
Now you have the choice of creating your own font.
So far, I know the two most famous options for creating fonts:
The first is handwritten;
The second one is processed in English.
Handwritten.
Handmade is done in two ways:
The first one is drawn in Photoshop (for example) by hand and EACH LETTER is saved as a separate graphic file.
The second way - all the letters are written on paper by hand in your handwriting and scanned into a computer, and then opened in Photoshop (for example), separated from each other and saved as a separate file. An example in the figure.
Figure 1 - letter B
After you have saved each letter, and also saved all punctuation marks, all English letters and something else, you click on the silhouette of the letter you want to create with the right mouse button.
Then select Import image.
In the Import image section, you click on the Load button.
In the next window, you open the folder in which you saved the written letters (it is advisable to call pictures with letters by the corresponding names, a picture with the letter B, call it "B", etc.)
An image of this letter will appear on the right in the window. Click Open.
If you don't see your letter in the Import image panel, don't worry, it's there. Just move the sliders of the left window back and forth and it will appear.
Now it needs to be generated.
In the Threshold field - you adjust the darkness of your letter (gradient from white to black).
You can also define the rest of the fields by clicking. It all depends on the depth of your creativity.
The field of how we stumbled into sweetness, click on the Generate button.
Here is your letter and appeared where it should be! Rejoice!!!
When you are satisfied enough, we proceed to the most crucial moment. The moment that influences how your letter will come into contact with the rest (surrounding it).
Double-click on the box with your letter (the box in which the silhouette of this letter used to be).
A lined window opens in front of you. Do not be intimidated by a large number of red dotted stripes, they will all come in handy.
For convenience, expand the window to full screen.
Let's start with two main lines - left and right. (most likely when you open the window they will stand together to the left of your letter). Click on the small black triangle at the top right of the lines and move the right line to the right, and leave the left one in place.
These two lines show the maximum approximation of the side letters to the one you are currently making.
Tip: do not put the right line very close, keep a distance, otherwise your letters will climb on top of each other.
The bottom line is the maximum limit for letters with a tail (c, y, u, z, r, d) the maximum length of the tail.
The second line from the bottom is the line of support for each letter. If your letters stand differently on this line, then, accordingly, everything will dance in the Word.
The third line from the bottom is the height of small letters.
The fourth is the height of large letters, numbers, as well as the letter "c", and maybe for someone "d" and "b".
And the fifth line from the bottom is the edge line of the top line. (In my:))
And so, step by step, you create your own handwritten font.
Easy, but long and monotonous.
Yes, by the way, do not forget to save this font and drop it into the font folder through the Toolbar, then, for reliability, restart the computer, open Word and type in your own letters.
Do not be afraid if your letters are not so beautiful and evenly arranged the first time, you can open your font in Font Creator at any time and change something.
Processed English
It's the easiest... I think so.
For example, you downloaded an English-language font for yourself called “Cezanne”, for example, but you are upset by the fact that this font is English-language, and you so wanted to type in these beautiful letters in Russian.
We proceed as follows:
- Create a new template with silhouettes of English and Russian letters (as described above).
- Open the Cezanne font in Font Creator and drag it carefully without confusing letters and numbers to the places of pale silhouettes.
- English letters are replaced?
- Have the numbers been replaced?
- Great, now we make Russian letters.
- Insert the corresponding English letters instead of Russian silhouettes: A,B,C,E,T,Y,U,O,P,H,K,X,M
- Instead of the letter I, you can insert the English R and display it in the editor (in a cell) window.
- Instead of the letter G - English L
- And so far as your imagination will allow you.
Tip: Helps a lot in many cases English letter I. Twist it, twist it, cut it, at least draw the whole alphabet for it.
- And so Makar until you calm down.
I think that's about it.
If you have any questions write here (in the journal). I'll help in any way I can.
Sincerely, your SOK.
All for art!!!
Create your own font
Hi guys. As promised, I'm telling you how to make your own font.
I must say right away that I do not give a link to download the program here, but it will not be difficult for you to find it yourself. The program is called High-Logic Font Creator, I started with it, and this simplest way turn the letters you draw into a real font. If you notice any mistakes, please write, because all this was done almost intuitively, and I don’t pretend to be a master at all :) And as usual, by clicking on larger images will open.
Friends who deal with fonts professionally, do not swear, there will be practically no terms and rules. The post is intended for those who have always wanted to create something similar, but did not know how to approach :)
So, the first thing we need to do is draw letters, numbers, symbols, that is, everything you need. I drew this set for stocks, today I will turn it into a font. It doesn't have small lowercase letters, so draw those too to make the font complete. 
I draw everything in illustrator, but it's up to you. Many simply write on paper and scan, also an option.
Next, you need to save each letter separately. That's it, now open the program.
Our first action is quite obvious: File - New... We see the window:
In the window, enter the name of our font in the Font family name field, select Unicode, Regular, Don "t include outlines. These are my settings :)
Click OK, we see that the font template has opened with all possible letters, numbers and other symbols.
I don't remember what the default font is, I have the Arial font template set. To change the font, add letters, you need to go to Insert - Characters, this is in the top panel. You can also add the Cyrillic alphabet there, but we will not do this yet.
Next, the most important thing is to add our letters. Find the capital letter A and double-click on it.
We see a window with a bunch of cells and stripes.
We panic, turn off the program, take a deep breath, come back. Now Dina will explain everything.
Each strip has its own purpose, but first things first. In this window, right-click anywhere and click Import Image.
We remember where we saved all our letters, find our A, open it. Another window:
There is nothing complicated here, move the slider, click on everything you see, the preview will tell you which settings are best to set. The picture is mine, you can try the same. Click Generate. Here is our letter:
So, what we see: two vertical stripes and five horizontal ones.
The letter should be located between two vertical stripes, they mean the distance before and after the letter. Do not place them too close or directly on the letter, otherwise there will be porridge.
And now for the horizontal lines. I will not load you with terms, I explain popularly:
1. The top bar is the maximum distance above the baseline (4).
2. The second from the top is the height of capital letters.
3. Third - the height of lowercase letters.
4. The base line along which all letters line up.
5. Maximum distance below baseline (4).
To change the parameters of the horizontal lines, you need to open Settings in the Format tab. I recommend to google the parameters of some popular fonts and take them as an example if you want to change something. But I didn't do that :)
As you can see, I've increased the letter to line 2, CapHeight, all that's left is to adjust the vertical stripes. I want to have a decent distance before and after the letter, so I move the letter itself away from the left line, and take the right one by the black triangle on top and move it closer to the letter. Like this:
This is exactly the same way I will do with all my capital letters. If you add lowercase letters, make them as high as line number 3.
When we have positioned the letter, just close this window. All letters will fall into place, and this is noticeable:
I have a letter Q with a tail, I don’t want it to stand out from the general series of letters, so I place it on the baseline, and leave the tail below.
Do the same with everyone. lower case(p, q, y, g, j), and some, on the contrary, may be slightly higher than the capital letter (d, b, k, f).
I don't need numbers yet, so my picture looks like this:
If you can't wait to try the letters in action, then go to File - Save as, save the font in the format proposed by the program.ttf.
We install the font, go to the text editor, find our font, check it. Works!
Well, now you can have fun. We take the most unfortunate photo of fireworks on May 9, conjure in Photoshop, type text, and voila! :)
Not so difficult, right? Try it and show us the results :)
If you are even a little connected with design, then you know that fonts play one of the key roles and give your project originality and uniqueness.
You can find thousands of different fonts on the Internet, but it is this variety that makes our choice so painful ... If you want something “that” as much as I do, then create your own font. In this lesson, we'll take a look at creating a ttf font using Fontographer.
Fontographer is an easy-to-learn, but very powerful editor that allows you to create new and edit existing fonts.
So! We will create a new font from an image that I found on the Internet. I desperately needed the Nandos Bold font, which is used in the interior design of the Portuguese restaurant chain Nandos.
But since this font was developed directly for the restaurant, I could not find it on the Internet. But I found a picture with the alphabet of this font, which was drawn by children from South Africa. Thank them for this! Here .
STEP 1 - Open the image of our font in any graphic editor (I use Photoshop, but this is not so important). Select the capital letter "A" and copy it to the clipboard. We will need the letter A later to study kerning.
STEP 2 - Launch Fontographer and create a new font(Command + N). In the window that opens, double-click on the cell with the letter BUT, resulting in outline creation window (outline) letters.
STEP 3 - Paste the image you copied earlier. The program will automatically place it on the layer Template and on the screen the letter will look pale gray.
Selecting a layer Template, move the letter to the lower baseline. Here you can also make elementary editing (scale, skew, mirror reflection etc.).
STEP 4 - Selecting the Outline layer(it is important!!!). Now we need to stroke our letter. This can be done manually or automatically using the command autotrace.
In our example, the accuracy is not so important, so choose from the menu element command Autotrace… In the window that opens, you can play with the detail settings (more detailed outline to the right, smoother outline to the left).
STEP 5 - Opening the Metrics window by pressing Command + K or by selecting a command from the menu Window. The new window will contain the letter whose outline we just created.
Drag the two guides on the sides of the letter to set the distance to adjacent characters (before and after).
STEP 6 - Repeat steps with 3 on 5 , but now for the letter V(letter V we need to learn kerning).
STEP 7 - After you create the letter V, enter consecutive characters AV in field Text top of the window Metrics. Both letters will be displayed in the window, each with its own indents.
Actually the letters A and V should be closer to each other (when compared with H and K, V, etc.), otherwise, when used, it will seem that the distance between them is indecently large.
Adjusting this distance is called kerning.. Click on a letter V and drag the guide L closer to letter A.
STEP 8 - Enter a letter combination VA to the text line of the window Metrics. Drag guide L letters A closer to symbol V. Every time you enter text in the window Metrics, Fontographer stores the kerning pair for these characters in font memory.
To make your font look more professional, try to create as many kerning pairs as possible for different characters. There is no specific set of kerning pairs, because it all depends on your font design.
The only thing I will give short list characters requiring kerning adjustment: 4, 6, 7, 9, A, C, D, F, G, J, K, L, P, T, U, V, W, Y, and most lowercase characters.
STEP 9 - After saving the font (Command + S), you still won't get ttf font. The program will just write all your actions to a file with its own internal format.
STEP 1 -0 Before we can save our work to a TTF file, we need to give our font a name. To do this, go to the menu Element > Font Info… Fill in the font name, developer company, designer fields. You can leave the code macOS Roman.
Well, now boldly go to the menu file and choose Generate Font Files… Check in what format Fontographer offers to save the font (should be ttf), specify the folder to save and click the button Generate.
That's all! Of course, creating your own font is not fun, but it's worth it.
The text that we type in Word may look different. Different type and size of letters, thickness, style, color, text position on the page. Moreover, all this can be changed after the text is printed. And many do just that - it's easier, faster, and more convenient.
Font
is how the letters are written. That is, a font is a type of letters.
Here is an example of writing in different fonts:
There are a lot of fonts in the world. Some of them are already built into the Windows system, while others can be added. For example, download from the Internet and install on your computer.
Of course, there are a lot of fonts, but not all of them will work - most of them cannot print Russian text.
To select a font in Microsoft Word, you need to use a special field. It is located at the top left side.
At the end of this field there is a small button with an arrow. If you click on it, a list of fonts installed on your computer will open.
There are quite a few of them. To verify this, you need to turn the wheel on the mouse or pull down the slider on the right side. By selecting a font from the list, the text will be typed in this type.
How to change the font
Even if the text is already typed in some type of font, it can always be changed. But for this, the text must first be selected.
Let's look at an example. Type in a couple of sentences. Please note that the text will be typed in the type that is shown in the font field at the moment. In my case it is Calibri.
To change the font of printed text, it must be selected. To do this, move the cursor (arrow or wand) to the very beginning or to the very end of the text. Then press the left mouse button and, without releasing it, drag to the other end. When the text is painted in a different color (usually black or blue), it will mean that it is selected.
Now it remains to change the font. Click on the small arrow button at the end of the field with the name of the current font. A list will open. Choose from it the appropriate font.
The type of letters should change. If this does not happen, then you have chosen the wrong font - that is, one that does not work with Russian letters.
The font used to print documents is called Times New Roman.
How to change the font size
The font size is the size of the letters in the printed text.
There is a special field for changing the size of letters. This field contains the value that is currently set.
It can be changed. To do this, click on the small button with an arrow at the end of the field. A list will open. Click on the desired size - and the text will be printed with it.
If the suggested sizes are not enough, turn the mouse wheel or drag the slider on the right.
The font size can also be changed in another way. Highlight the value that is currently set. To do this, just click the left mouse button inside the field - by numbers. The numbers will be painted in a different color.
Then type in the desired value and press the Enter button on your keyboard.
To change the size of already typed text, you must first select it. To do this, move the cursor (arrow or wand) to the very beginning or to the very end of the text. Then press the left mouse button and, without releasing it, drag to the other end. When the text is colored in a different color (usually black or blue), it means that it is selected.
Now it remains to change the size. To do this, click on the small button next to the current font size and select the desired one. You can also simply delete this value, type the desired one and press the Enter button on the keyboard.
It is worth noting that it is customary to print text in 14 or 12 font sizes, and headings in 16 font sizes.
