typeface design/font making

rewch

rewch

Well-known member
i need to make a font from a character set that only exists as a lithograph... have scanned each letter & have them as eps...

all the information i can find seems to point to fontographer... not sure i want to spend $349 for one thing...

does any anyone have any thoughts/shortcuts/advice?
 
D

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
hmm didn't realise fontlab had bought fontographer... i've always found the drawing tools clunky compared to Freehand, and I have no idea if the buyout means you can now get support - macromedia had orphaned it the last time i used it.

i'd try the demo of fontlab's typetool ($99). haven't used it but it should be fine for basic stuff. i have used their transtype app and its sweet.

http://fontlab.com/Font-tools/TypeTool/
 
rewch

rewch

Well-known member
thanks bleep... have played around with the demo but can't seem to import the images... can't tell if it's disabled in demo, i'm an idiot or both... people who design typefaces are clearly enormously heroic
 
N

newliberia

little maw
fontographer

Ill swap a loan of fontographer for lunch in the chequers pub
its Mac os 9 though....
when I was making fonts I think I traced them in freehand and then imported bitmaps.....quite slow progress and never saw it to its conclusion but let me know.
 
D

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
rewch said:
thanks bleep... have played around with the demo but can't seem to import the images... can't tell if it's disabled in demo, i'm an idiot or both... people who design typefaces are clearly enormously heroic
Click to expand...
Last type job I had (a font in two weights) combined with other work I was doing at the time, almost killed me. I was a wizened husk at the end of it. Unpleasant.

I'm sure its easier if you really know what you're doing :)
 
rewch

rewch

Well-known member
that's what i thought... hard graft... but i reckon if you vector the bitmaps first might be a bit easier... will definitely do a lunch/swap... os9 no danger... will report back by phone when i have a spare moment!
 
M

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
Vector the bitmaps and layout with a 1cm square at the top and bottom of each character, these squares needs to be in the same place for each character and make sure there's space between it and the type design.

Fontographer autoscales things, which is why you use the 1cm squares to make sure everything scales in at the correct size you want. You can just copy and paste each character in as you go, pm me if you need more help. Oh yeah, the last one I did for FontFont took me 300hrs :eek:
 
rewch

rewch

Well-known member
300 hrs!!!!! thank you for the offer though... think those squares will come in very handy
 
sufi

sufi

lala
it would be lovely to have a typewritten font that is soft and smudgy like real a typewriter,
typewriter+note.jpeg


Clinamenic said:
Just published it on 1001Fonts!

www.1001fonts.com

Sundae Plush Font · 1001 Fonts

Download Sundae Plush Font · Free for commercial use ·
www.1001fonts.com www.1001fonts.com
Click to expand...

all the typewriter fonts i have seen are smooth vectorised letters or glitchy in stark black and white like a photocopy
www.1001fonts.com

typewriter (search results) · 1001 Fonts

513 free fonts in 212 families · Free licenses for commercial use · Direct font downloads · Mac · Windows · Linux
www.1001fonts.com www.1001fonts.com

i dunno an fonts even support transparency or greyscale?
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
sufi said:
it would be lovely to have a typewritten font that is soft and smudgy like real a typewriter,
typewriter+note.jpeg




all the typewriter fonts i have seen are smooth vectorised letters or glitchy in stark black and white like a photocopy
www.1001fonts.com

typewriter (search results) · 1001 Fonts

513 free fonts in 212 families · Free licenses for commercial use · Direct font downloads · Mac · Windows · Linux
www.1001fonts.com www.1001fonts.com

i dunno an fonts even support transparency or greyscale?
Click to expand...
Maybe there are ways to do that, but I haven’t seen any. Might just be a matter of file type. As for smudgy typewriters fonts, that’s totally doable, and I’d imagine there are at least a couple good ones out there.
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Cool new open source font from Vercel:

vercel.com

Geist Mono Font — Vercel

Geist is a typeface made for developers and designers, embodying Vercel's design principles of simplicity, minimalism, and speed, drawing inspiration from the renowned Swiss design movement.
vercel.com vercel.com
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Man this font is awesome - I just switched from Google's Roboto Mono (which was previously my open-source monospace font of choice) to Geist, via CSS on my website.
 
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