What other variables might need to be taken into consideration in estimating the person-hours required?

Is the font going to be a display font, or a text font?

Good question. I’m afraid of even starting, since Thomas Phinney came to my class and scared the bejesus out of everyone by telling them how long Robert Slimbach would work on a font. Ouch.

So here are my guesses, based on what I would plan on doing, 1-2 hours a day to start:

There’s obviously the need to know the interface and workings of the design app. Maybe a week or less of fooling around with tutorials?

Then the design stage on paper or rough digital, with pre-production planning, thumbnails and roughs. Maybe 1-2 weeks? Maybe have the basics of the entire U&lc/numerals within 3?

Then the outlines begin, and if my Adobe Illustrator classes have taught me anything, good beziers only come with time and experience. For me, I’d say that this would be the bulk of the work. 2-3 months? Any longer than that, and I quit. This is supposed to be my first font, not my last.

Last, spacing and kerning, which I know should be done roughly during the previous stage, but finalized and perfected here, alongside testing and revising. Maybe a month?

So, what’s that add up to? I’m willing to invest about 5 months to get a good, solid font that covers all the basics and doesn’t suck. I’m sure I could whip out some autotraced “grunge” font in about a week, but who’d want to?

Anyone think I’m totally off base with my assumptions?

I think it all depends on when you define something as ’finished’. What are your quality standards, etc. I guess you could make a typeface in 5 months, but I think 2 years isn’t so strange either.

It depends on your level of preparation, your comfort level with the tools at hand, and your goals for the design. If you’re limiting yourself to basic western Latin character sets (union of Windows Latin, MacRoman, Latin-1 and Latin-0 encodings), five months might be a bit long of an estimate, but not unrealistic.

I turned out my first font in about a week, but the one I’m working on currently has been in progress off and on for 5 years or more.

But as a first font? I’m sure you could have one in the works for two to ten years, but it’s like anything. You need to see tangible results of your effort, and two years stretches the credibility of any first-time endeavor.

Most of the people I know started out making less-than-perfect fonts because they were made relatively quickly, but they got bitten by the bug and their patience and quality control standards rise with every subsequent typeface.

I’d say that for myself, I might very well stretch out the bezier perfection stage, because I’m a perfectionist when it comes to that sort of thing. (Of course, that’s exactly what is needed in a type designer, and is precisely the reason why Slimbach will spend a decade on his fonts.)

My first font took a couple of months working sporadically. I don’t know that it was ever really finished so much as I did as much as I could with my first big typeface idea before realizing how fundamentally flawed it was.

But it was definitely worth the effort.

How long does it take to find a gap in the current offering of type that really needs to be filled?

A more interesting question is how long after releasing your first font will you regret doing so? ;-)

answer to all of the questions above: 128 hours 42 minutes 3 seconds

Forever.

ChrisL

I did my first font as an undergraduate thesis project. I still am happy with the overall concept I had, but if I were ever to bring it to market, there would be thousands of extra hours I’d put into it. I’d say I grossly underestimated what was involved in creating a font, and I’d imagine that’s a common realization for most designers.

Check out http://www.typeworkshop.com/index.php?id1=type-basics for some general guidelines

The best thing to do is open up FontLab and look at how some fonts you love are built. The first thing I realized when doing this is 1) most of the bezier points are at 90 degrees or 180 degrees, and 2) the best fonts are not slaves to the sketch you scan in, nor do they slavishly try to adhere to any geometric or mathematical rules.

Simon has it: first fonts aren’t usually fit for release. While you’re learning a process with so many weird variables, don’t work under the expectation of a final product. If you happen to take on something manageable and within your capabilities, it MIGHT end up worth releasing, but that’s not something you can determine until you get halfway into it.

Possibly a better question: how long until a good font?

Since there are thousands of different approaches, and thousands of possible styles, there can be no standard, even if you gave the same challenge/assignment to 100 people of equivalent experience and skill. Some fonts are autotraced (and not necessarily garbage), and some are carefully hand-drawn, one glyph at a time. Revivals, digitized lettering, adapted handwriting, large type systems, roman and italics, etc. etc. are different kinds of design challeng