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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 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:
Thank you for the in depth explanation! This is awesome!!!
So the why is a combo of "because I want to" and because I've put so much effort into the aesthetic of the book that I'd like the font to match. The story is about an old woman who starts stealing cats and it gets out of control, so there are cat tails everywhere and I think they'd make for the perfect inspiration for the typeface. I found some really fun jumping off points (1, 2, 3, 4 ) that are honestly just incredible as they are. The tails from the story art, circled in this image in red, are what I'm using as a "guide" for the serif/flourishes.
I really appreciate all the insight and information you shared here. Really excited to share it when it's complete!
EDIT: I just tried my hand a sketching, carving, and printing a few lower case letters. I think it's going pretty well! I'd like to push them even further though as they seem like they are still kind of "standard" typeset. I think more thin/thick variation and more tail-y serif! (I used a stamp pad so the texture is a bit odd, in kind of a nice way, but just incase anyone is curious that's why).
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.
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.
I'm left handed but I'm accustomed to use the mouse with my right hand so when I write in a computer I do it with that hand, the crazy thing is that it looks pretty similar to my real left-hand writing, same ugly letters, same style.
This is awesome! I just went through the process of making a font and it's so fun to watch it come together in like 30 minutes. I'm going to be doing a bit more of a drawing to linocut to digital, but it's such a helpful primer on how does this look roughed out! Thanks for much sharing!!!
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
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 designed a font back in 1997 using Fontographer (version 4.1) and got a cease and desist from The Designers Republic because they thought my font was similar to their font 6x6T, even though my font was a from scratch design on a 7×7 grid. I was young and naïve, and the font was already widely distributed on the internet, so nothing happened. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/1997/06/17/cease-and-desist-the-designers-republic/
These days, for such a font you could do it in an hour using the FontStruct website. Or using Bits'n'Picas app. Or even my own pixel art app Dottie.
Oooh, shiny!
Looks nice, I gave it a quick try and the free version seems good enough for my needs (making patterns, or small images while listening intently to podcasts or audiobooks I care about).
If you care I have some tiny feedback, but unless you find another way to get paid (other than through google) I won't pay so my opinion isn't that valuable anyway.
I'm puzzled... there is no free version of my app Dottie. And it's on the Mac App Store so payment is via Apple not Google. Might you have tried a different app?
Edit: ah, somebody has released a pixel art app called Dottie on Android. That's going to be confusing.
Oh, wow, well, then I don't really know how to continue this conversation so I'll awkwardly stop here.
I mean what a compliment! How different was creating fonts back then?
The tools were less sophisticated but still quite capable. I loved using Fontographer, it was such well considered software. The rules of type design were exactly the same, as they had been for many years prior.
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.
I'd love to see what you ended up creating if you still have it and would be willing to share!
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 .
That is really cool, I love how the font came out! I'll give that a go as well!
I've designed a few fonts in my days in the entertainment industry.
It really depends on what the intention of the font is.
Like I designed everything from alien languages used on console screens, to derivatives of already made fonts(usually a common font with adjustments like making o's round to match logo and branding), to handwritten fonts, etc.
I haven't made a font in a LONG time and at this point I forgot what software I was using, but I have saved a few links over the years of newer solutions for font creation in case I need to again.
So this is super nerdy, but I've always been fascinated with the Kryptonian language from the Superman comics, and I have always wanted to change my phone into that font in order to theme it out to look like a Kryptonian device. The Kryptonian fonts out there are good for text, but don't map 1:1 with all the glyphs used in modern tech including formatting like bold and stuff, so I've wanted to modify it to be a bit more digitally legible.
My biggest advice is to really keep an eye on kerning between letters. You might think that everything should be equal distance from eachother, but what becomes jarring is when the kerning is off. And there's so many combinations of letters that getting kerning right in every situation can be challenging.
There are websites that convert your own handwriting to fonts.