Create your own font I
You are a talented designer, a skilled calligrapher, and have learned all about serifs, side-bearings ( Side shelf/reserved space), kerning (kerning) knowledge. Now you plan to make a font of your own (what! You don’t know what serifs, sideframes and kerning are? Well, before you start making a font, be sure to read all the articles on iLT Read this! If you really want to be successful, you should learn as much as you can about it. If you're not a talented designer or calligrapher, don't worry, you can still create beautiful fonts. —It requires a little effort, a lot of knowledge, and a little inspiration)
Secret weapon: font editing software
As mentioned above, excellent design and beautiful design. Calligraphy works and in-depth font knowledge, etc., these things still cannot allow you to make fonts. You also need to convert your works into a format that the computer can understand, so you also need to have an excellent font editor on hand. software. These softwares vary in functionality and price, and run on different platforms. Here are some of the big names:
Font Editing Software
FontLabStudio This is the software I use to create fonts. It has become an industry standard to some extent, so it is also expensive, selling for $649. A 30-day free trial version is available so you can try it out before buying. There are versions for PC and Mac platforms. FontLabStudio is a software I use frequently, and I can assure you that it is excellent and its user community is quite popular.
FontForge Basically, FontForge can do everything FontLab can do, and it is free and open source. Also because it is open source, installing FontForge under Windows is not a simple matter (you must install Cygwin first). At the same time, its documentation is not as complete as FontLab. There was an interesting topic about FontForge on the Typophile forum recently. You can check it out to decide whether to embrace open source. FontForge is available for PC, Mac and Linux. If you are a Linux user, FontForge may be your only choice.
Those who are rolling in money can consider DTLFontMaster, which has all the functions of FontLab and more, but is quite expensive. FontMaster is made up of several different modules, which I think is cool, but also quite scary. Applicable to PC and Mac platforms.
FontCreator is another option that is more affordable than FontLab. But it can only handle fonts in TrueType and OpenType formats - it can't handle Type1 fonts, and it's only a Windows version.
TypeTool is also an entry-level product from FontLab and is at the same level as FontCreator. According to the official statement: TypeTool is designed for "students, font design enthusiasts and professional creatives who occasionally need to create or modify fonts." PC and Mac.
The former true king of font editing software was almost extinct after being sealed for many years because the manufacturer stopped development. It was not until FontLab acquired the source code that it recently released an upgraded version for Mac. Since its last updated version dates back to the late 1990s, I really hope Fontlab gives this new version a refreshing rewrite. It's half the price of FontLabStudio, but I haven't tried it yet. It can run on both PC and Mac platforms, but the latest version is currently only available to Mac users.
All of these software operate in the same process, differing only in the specific details, interface, options and capabilities. So do some research before you buy – download and try out some demos, listen to user reviews and debates, and decide which font editing software is best for you. I heard that some people start with TypeTool to first determine whether they really like font design, and then when the limitations of TypeTool really become an obstacle, they finally upgrade to FontLabStudio.
When you have a good font editing software, you can have three different basic processes to create a font.
Method 1: Draw on paper
Tools needed:
A good pen
White paper
Ruler (optional)
Scanner
Adobe Photoshop (or other similar image editing software)
ScanFont font scanning software
Font editing software
Do you have artistic talent? Good handwriting? Okay, grab a good pen, a dozen pieces of white paper, and start writing your letters. (Don’t overlook pen choice. If you want your lettering strokes to be thick and full, try Sharpied markers. If you want to do pen calligraphy, break out your calligraphy pen set. Want your strokes to be thin and subtle. , then choose a fine-pointed precision pen to write ) in larger sizes to get more details. All letters should be as consistent in height as possible (you may need to mark the paper with a pencil first). A good font is a complete set of characters, so don't miss anything—like punctuation, tildes, accents, parentheses and square brackets, and numbers. You may also want to include some rare characters, such as some letters found in Old English and Old European languages. Before you put pen to paper, create a new font in a font-editing software and see what characters are included in a font's standard alphabet. Some of these characters may be ones you've never heard of, but a professional typographer might want to see them in your typeface.
Scan your beautiful work into Photoshop, and then convert the image to bitmap format (black and white mode without grayscale).
That’s almost it. Open your bitmap in FontLab's font scanning software ScanFont. This nifty little software (the Mac version of FontLabStudio comes with ScanFont for free - lucky Mac users!) allows you to import bitmap images and convert them into characters in a font. (Font editing software only operates on outlines, the basic vector lines used in Illustrator. Scanners and software like Photoshop only operate on bitmaps. ScanFont is a bridge between the two media formats.) After the scan is completed , you can save your font in ScanFont, or copy a single character from ScanFont to FontLabStudio, and start your long and hard and fun font editing work until it is perfect.
Method 2: Draw with a drawing tablet
Required tools:
WacomTabletWacom drawing tablet
AdobeIllustrator
Font editing software
If you have a Wacom drawing tablet, you can save many of the above steps, because you can draw your fonts directly in the vector drawing software. FontLabStudio supports copying and pasting directly from Adobe Illustrator. vector data.
Method 3: Draw directly in font editing software
Required tools:
Mouse
Font editing software
Iron Hand, and God-like Patience
I once made two fonts, completely completed in FontLabStudio, relying on my mouse, a firm iron hand, and a considerable number of Undo command. This method is absolutely feasible and will produce more accurate fonts than drawing outside the software and then importing it. As you might expect, font-editing software contains a plethora of tools that work together to complete a range of tasks: tools that generate perfect straight lines and curves, and wizards that help you align everything with extreme precision.
Create your own fonts II
The total number of fonts sold on MyFonts has exceeded 55,000. The sheer number of existing fonts illustrates the fact that we face nearly infinite choices when designing a font. Some choices are pretty basic, such as: serif or sans-serif (of course there are tons of subcategories for both); handwriting vs. precise typography; wide vs. narrow; bold vs. light. But beyond the obvious choices, there are some terms you've probably never heard of:
Closed, semi-closed or open 4?
Three strokes or two strokes of Y?
Is there a descender or a J at the baseline?
Double-layer or single-layer architecture?
Double-layer or single-layer architecture?
A crossed, connected, or rounded W?
You can compare more fonts you like to understand the above detailed differences, or more, for example - is the three-stroke Y more traditional to you? Are you going to use this structure in your new font? Would a J with a descender fit your font better, or did you decide not to let it go beyond the baseline?
You may have more things to consider:
The height of the horizontal bar in your e
Your * (asterisk) should have How many petals? (Annotation: I checked, and they all have 4, 5, and 6 petals)
The inclination angle of your # number
Do your y and q have tails?
If you get bogged down in these details from the beginning, you will never get started with the actual font design. But you should definitely consider them before you start designing. Spending a little more time outside of font design software may save you from spending a lot of time repeatedly modifying or reworking characters during the formal design.
VerticalMetrics
There are also a series of decisions you need to make, such as vertical metrics - a series of dimensions that determine the various heights of your characters. Related terms are prepared below for you:
Upline, defines the top position of a lowercase letter (usually the highest point of a lowercase b)
Capital height, defines the height of an uppercase letter ( Usually the height of capital H)
x height, the height of most lowercase letters, such as v.
Baseline, the imaginary line where the character "sits".
Down the line, define the bottom position of the lowercase letter (usually the bottom of the lowercase p)
Before you start designing the font, you must solve the following problems related to vertical measurement:
Will the upper edge of your tallest lowercase letter be higher than the height of your uppercase letter? (Many fonts will exceed this, but not all.)
How high should your x-height be? (Just raising or lowering the "standard" x-height can be enough to produce interesting effects.)
How low should the lower edge be defined?
There are also some basic principles to consider when deciding on the vertical measurement for your font.
Characters with a curved bottom tend to be slightly below the baseline. Likewise, characters with curved tops often extend slightly beyond the standard x-height or caps-height.
The reason for these basic principles is that curved characters will look slightly smaller if they are not slightly higher or lower than square characters. I mean, the law doesn't say you have to follow this rule. If your font works better with the exact same baseline and height, then do that. But it's not a good idea to give them the same height because you don't know if it's better.
HorizontalMetricsHorizontalMetrics
Defining horizontal metrics for fonts takes a lot of your time. The main leveling measure—kerning (more on that below)—requires many hours of hard and detailed work on your part to complete. (I assume you must have read Johno’s article about kerning before? No?! You really should read it. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you here.) But before we discuss kerning, we should first Think sidebearing (reserved space, or more succinctly translated: "side-bearing").
Properly setting the sidebearing (the same below) can make subsequent kerning adjustments easier and save you a lot of precious time spent on optimizing horizontal measurements.
The side shelves are the spaces reserved to the left and right of the characters. In the picture above, the left and right sides of the letter U define the same side frames. This is common, but not required. Sometimes a sideframe can be positive on one side and negative on the other - this means that it is possible for the sideframe to be inside a character.
Note that the left side frame (LSB) of j is already within the actual boundary of the character - equivalent to a character with part cut off. Why do this? Okay, let's take a look at what happens when j meets other letters.
The internal sideframe tells the computer to render j closer to the adjacent character to the left than standard spacing. If the left and right side frames are defined the same, the space between j and its left neighbor becomes large and dull.
Kerning can also solve this problem, but if j is always (or often) close to the adjacent character on the left, then defining a negative sideframe can reduce your kerning work. , and, for those who don't use kerning (unfortunately, in most word processing software, the kerning option is turned off by default), you can get better letter spacing.
Kerning kerning
After reading Johno’s article on kerning, can you already keep up with these basic courses? Here are some details about kerning that you as a type designer should know.
A good sideframe setup is like having a head coach who has a good overall plan for the game and will allow your font to work well in most situations where users don't use kerning. Get relatively decent results. But in some specific situations, in order to obtain perfect results, you must also have an excellent offensive coordinator to organize specific offenses on the field-that is, kerning.
After I complete the sidestand setup, I like to print out the character pairs in the font to check what went wrong and needs assistance with kerning. I actually wrote a script to generate an OpenOffice document from these character pairs, which you can download here. Then you can open the document in OpenOffice, select all the text, change it to your own font, and print it out for review.
Once you find those problematic character pairs, you'll have to get your hands dirty and fix them yourself. Here is an example of one of my fonts, showing the V-e pairing with sidestands set up but no kerning yet. Notice how huge the gap is between the two characters.
Then after the kerning:
What we want to do is make the letters flow naturally from one to the next. I often think of kerning as if I were making my characters nestle into each other.
Some issues to pay attention to when doing kerning:
If you find that you have to do kerning for every pair of characters, then it is probably your problem. Something went wrong with the sidestand setup. A good sideframe setup usually means that a portion of the character pairs are already set up and no separate kerning is needed.
Some people will tell you that you only need to kern the most commonly used character pairs. For example, for q, you only need to adjust the kerning of qu and qa, but qz is not necessary - who would use qz in actual printing? But I am an exception. I insist on kerning all character pairs, no matter how unreasonable those combinations are. The purists out there are probably going to faint again or be so frightened that they can hardly breathe. But why should I restrict users of my font to having nice kerning only when using standard character pairs? If someone wants to print qz, let them print a nice qz.
Most font editing software has an automatic kerning function. This is a good start, but it's wise to check and adjust individually after the automatic adjustment. No algorithm can surpass the human eye.
Scratching theSurface Scratching the skin
Up to this point, we have just scratched the skin. If not dealt with in time, it may cause "font mania". I do hope so. Even after so many years of font design, I still learn something new every time I open FontLabStudio and work hard in it.
Create your own font III
Always looking for inspiration in font design. After the summer, I bought a set of cheap calligraphy pens, convincing myself that they would transform my chicken-crawling characters. After wasting a week and dozens of blank sheets of paper, I still haven't come up with anything interesting or remotely artistic. Finally, one night, tired and disappointed, after running out of black ink, I inserted a red refill and wrote the following alphabet - which later became my Joules. . I thought it might be of interest to people if I wrote out the process of how it turned into a font in this case study.
Here is one of the many sketches I wrote that night:
Close-up:
Super close-up: a capital A that I can’t wait to use.
From sketch to font
The process of creating Joules font from sketch is as written in my previous two articles. I scanned and input the sketch. The following is the scanned draft. What it looks like after converting to black and white bitmap mode in Photoshop.
Pay attention to the rough noise contained in the original bitmap:
Normally, I clean these bitmaps before importing them into Fontlab, but this is an exception. Here are the first steps, importing the bitmap into ScanFont:
A close-up in ScanFont:
I copied the new character into the correct location in FontLab. To give you a taste of how adjustments are made in FontLab, the imported rough A is enlarged below. I chose a problematic section.
Then start deleting those unpleasant nodes:
When adjusting characters in FontLab, we must make a balance between two temptations: on the one hand, we must make the outline as small as possible Smoothness, on the other hand, should leave as many rough nodes as possible to retain the interest of the font. I find that for calligraphy fonts, you shouldn't smooth out all the rough nodes. In a way, that would take away the calligraphic feel of them.
Character synthesis to save people in distress
One of the conveniences of FontLab is that it can automatically synthesize characters.
In this example, I first created an A, and then created an "Accent Accent":
Then I double-clicked the cell of the "A-Accent Accent"
FontLab created A synthesized character:
At this time, if you edit this A or that accent, the changes will be automatically updated to the synthesized "A accent" immediately.
Side stands
As mentioned in my previous articles on font design, setting up appropriate side stands is an important step. (One reason is that proper sidestands make kerning easy!) To start with rough adjustments for the characters, I roughly set up a small, positive sidestand. During the initial editing, the side frame of this y is displayed as follows:
What problems will there be with this setting? You can see it by looking at the pairing of a and y in the initial kerning setting.
In fact, I can keep the side frame of y unchanged, and then adjust y to be closer to a in the kerning pairing adjustment, and then so on, adjusting y to be close to the others in each kerning pairing. character. But obviously, it is simpler and more sensible to set a negative side shelf to the left of this y:
Here is what the improved white space setting looks like with default kerning. :
Kerning Kerning
Days, it took me hours to set the kerning for this font! I'd better leave you with the annoying details. But here's another example of kerning. This is what it looked like before adjustment:
After adjustment:
Ligatures ligatures
I created a considerable number of ligatures in Joules, and the user typeset them You can manually choose to apply them.
The following is an example of how I create these ligatures. First, let's take a look at the original row effect of z and a.
I could actually make them overlap beautifully in a funky way when kerning them, but a more responsible approach would be to make a z-a ligature. The first step is to create a blank character, and then copy z and a in:
The second step is to cut their outlines so that they can be combined at the appropriate position:
Step 3, delete the redundant parts:
Step 4, move the characters closer:
Step 5, connect the nodes:
Smart ligatures
The first version of Joules did not include smart ligatures: a technique I only recently learned. (This means the end of TrueType fonts, because smart ligature technology must be implemented in OpenType fonts.) I won’t go into the details, but what I can tell you is that you need to open a special OpenType panel in Fontlab , and usually also write some scripts so that the ligatures you create can be activated in some ligature-recognizing software. It generally looks like this:
Complete