What do you know. First post. (and probably a stupid one at that)
I’ve decided to create a typeface using my father’s handwriting. I have his letters A-Z a-z and 0-9 all on paper. I’ve never designed a typeface before so, I’m not sure where to begin. Do I scan the letters in and import the file to something like fontlab or do I redraw each letter in Illustrator? Is there a common practice or any tips you could give a beginner?
Thank you.
Roger
Do you have a .jpg scan of the letters? It sort of depends on what they look like, and a lot of it just depends on what you’re going for.
There are lots of relatively cheap services for exactly this. Google “custom handwriting font” and look around. If this is an end in itself, not practice for further adventures in type design, you could save yourself a lot of effort.
Thank you for the comments. The effort is actually part of what I am looking for. I have never done this before so I thought it would be a nice time to learn. I would like to replicate the letters as closely as possible.
All the nodes and control points in digital fonts are on a fine grid of “units per em” (UPM). This means that curves drawn in a normal vector drawing program and then imported into a font program will be approximated just a bit sloppily. This won’t make much difference in a handwriting font, but it’s a real nuisance for more precise designs. So it’s best that you learn to use the drawing tools in your font software. Scan your sample and import the bitmap of each letter as a guide for you to trace.
FONT CREATOR http://www.high-logic.com/fontcreator.html is an excellent font design program for the beginner. Its help files explain how to create a font from your own handwriting.
Captured from web.archive.org on 21 Sep 2008. view this capture