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Has anyone tried making their own font?
I'm attempting to make a font for a little kids book I'm working on and realized I don't know anything about the "theory" of font making. I feel like the choices I'm making aren't adequately reflecting the feeling I'm going for.
Has anyone attempted to make their own font? Are there any guides or materials you suggest looking at? If you're up for it I'd love if you could share it and talk about your process! Looking for a combination of guidance and inspiration!!
Cheers!
I never built a proper font, but I did turn my handwriting into a font. It was something my girlfriend wanted too so I built her a tool (it’s free) just in case you want to play around with it:
https://font.watermelonson.com
Hey this is really cool, thank you. My personal handwriting is awful and should not be immortalized in such a way but I know some people that will love this.
Love this! Handwriting is so unique to each person and I personally am attentive to people's handwriting styles. Here's a way to make a font per literate human.
(Caveat is that it doesn't reflect real handwriting as it's per letter and mixed cursive writers like me won't naturally reflect in this) but still enjoy this project of yours!
Glad you enjoy it! I also want to make it possible to have alternative glyphs so it looks more realistic. I just didn’t get around to it. I literally have an all build ready too that I never published. I really should get around to it
I hate how accurate it looked to my actual handwriting despite using a mouse and really half-assing it, guess when you're handwriting already sucks it doesn't matter. Really cool site.
the crafsman made a font for his channel ages ago so this might be helpful. Also his channel is amazing so check out his other videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4edSwS_cIDU
This is freaking awesome!!! I love crafsman, but I had no idea he had done this!
i am currently studying type design at uni!
step one is to figure out why you need to design a brand new typeface for this project. the obvious answer is 'because i want to!' and if that's the case then fair enough, but if that's not the answer then I'd suggest looking for something that's already been designed because it's a deceptively complicated process.
also think about who it's for. if this is a 'little kids book', are they the ones reading it? are their parents reading it to them? a book that's mostly text, written for a child to read is going to demand a very different typographic treatment (clear forms, large text, comfortable spacing, etc) than a picture book being read by a parent (who might reading at an odd angle to show off the pictures to a child in front of them). basically, come up with a pitch for the typeface, that will give you a better idea for what kind of styles to base it on.
i'd also reccomend looking at other children's books. hell, you could trace over the typography in some exemplary works and use that as a jumping off point. don't feel bad about 'copying' someone else, type designers do this all the time.
you need to be spelling words and sentences out as you design. A set of glyphs may look good in a-z order, but if actual word shapes aren't landing then there's no point.
one huge thing: a good type designer should also be a good typographer. take some time to learn the basics of typesetting, so you know what makes typography pleasant to read and can design with that in mind. the elements of typographic style is a great manual for this, but it's pretty dense.
some other notes:
I very much do not have real, studied/professional experience with this, but I did give it a go a while back and made my own font.
I didn't find this resource until I was mostly finished, but it's what I wished I would have had from the start: designwithfontforge.com
The other thing I found useful was taking pictures of various fonts I came across in the real world (primarily not computer fonts) to build up a better palette of ideas.
The only other main advice I'd give from my brief attempt at this, which it sounds like you've already handled, is to have a narrow aim of what you want to use your font for. I didn't realize until I was too far along how different fonts can be when used at different sizes or in different mediums.
Last year I went really far down the type design rabbit hole and started a slab serif typeface. I didn’t finish it and got very very sidetracked, but I am grateful for the experience. I still have ambitions to make a font at some point. I think before I do, I might try working with existing fonts; for example, turning Cooper Hewitt into a variable font or adding some OpenType features.
A few years ago I used FontForge to recreate (as close as I could) a typeface called Aldine, which I found in this Atlas Obscura post. If you like it I have it for download on my personal website.
If I recall correctly I created individual jpgs of each letter and used them as a background as I drew the shapes. Fontforge is like a typical draw program where you have points and pull handles to define curves. I don't think it took me terribly long, maybe a week or two in spare time. I did have to make up some stuff as I went along because the sample didn't contain numbers or punctuation apart from , and .
There are websites that convert your own handwriting to fonts.