typeface design/font making

[Clinamenic]

heh i was thinking the other direction - svg paths are lines of poetry

Oh from a pure composition perspective, totally, didn’t think about it like that.

 

[Clinamenic]

 

[droid]

Its nice, but those off-pixel shade vertical lines really bother me. Are you snapping everything to grid?

 

[Clinamenic]

Its nice, but those off-pixel shade vertical lines really bother me. Are you snapping everything to grid?

Pretty much yeah, but some of them I had to adjust. I think part of the problem is that the vertical lines become blurry at small font sizes, so maybe I can just go back and delete every other vertical line to make that shading sparser

 

[Clinamenic]

And because fonts (to my knowledge) need to be one color, i.e. I can't just make the shaded light a lighter color, I needed some way to convey shading in a monochrome fashion. Could have done it other ways, and a sparser line shading could work, depending on how much work it would be to go back through it haha.

 

[Clinamenic]

This one was super laborious to make. I have a layered GIMP file with over 100 layers now, and a good chunk of those layers are a 3D grid of voxel cells, which I can individually toggle on and off, as if I'm carving each glyph out of a 3x3x5 slab.

 

[droid]

Pretty much yeah, but some of them I had to adjust. I think part of the problem is that the vertical lines become blurry at small font sizes, so maybe I can just go back and delete every other vertical line to make that shading sparser

Its the anti-aliaisng. If you want sharp lines you need to pixel hint.

Quality Loss When Scaling down SVG's

I'm having a hard time trying to find the best way to produce an SVG that maintains it's quality through scaling. The actual size of the image is the medium one which is pixel-perfect in Illustrator.

graphicdesign.stackexchange.com

 

[Clinamenic]

Its the anti-aliaisng. If you want sharp lines you need to pixel hint.

Quality Loss When Scaling down SVG's

I'm having a hard time trying to find the best way to produce an SVG that maintains it's quality through scaling. The actual size of the image is the medium one which is pixel-perfect in Illustrator.

graphicdesign.stackexchange.com

Pixel hint? I’m using raster graphics, rather than vector graphics, if that makes a difference. Never knew what anti-aliasing was before this though, so thanks for the resource.

 

[droid]

Yeah, pixel hinting is when you align all your straight lines to the pixel level grid. You should also look at font-hinting.

Font hinting - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to get serious about making fonts this you should buy fontlab. I haven't used it in a long time but it's still one of the best tools available afaik.

FontLab 8

FontLab 8 for Mac & Windows: integrated font editor. 10-day free fully functional trial! Create, open, modify, draw, space, kern, hint and export desktop, web, color and variable OpenType fonts. 500+ improvements: new UI, adjustable sketching, polished drawing & editing, non-destructive...

www.fontlab.com

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah, pixel hinting is when you align all your straight lines to the pixel level grid. You should also look at font-hinting.

Font hinting - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you want to get serious about making fonts this you should buy fontlab. I haven't used it in a long time but it's still one of the best tools available afaik.

FontLab 8

FontLab 8 for Mac & Windows: integrated font editor. 10-day free fully functional trial! Create, open, modify, draw, space, kern, hint and export desktop, web, color and variable OpenType fonts. 500+ improvements: new UI, adjustable sketching, polished drawing & editing, non-destructive...

www.fontlab.com

Yeah I may end up springing for the lifetime subscription and just writing off as a work expense. Right now the GIMP-to-Calligrapher pipeline seems to leave a lot to be desired.

 

[droid]

Your stuff is good, there's potential there. You should give it a proper go. Font making is a subtle art, but its very rewarding. It's one of the oldest and purest forms of graphic design, like poetry is to literature.

 

[Clinamenic]

Your stuff is good, there's potential there. You should give it a proper go. Font making is a subtle art, but its very rewarding. It's one of the oldest and purest forms of graphic design, like poetry is to literature.

Thank you for the encouragement. You have any fonts out there available for purchase/download?

I'm going mostly with the open font license, but it would be cool to have some fonts eventually generating income, as needed. Right now I find myself in a position where I'd rather get a few decent fonts made and out there, just to build up a portfolio, and then gradually work toward making pro stuff (cause I fear I'd get burnt out on pro stuff right now, and I'd rather finish a decent font than not finish a better one).

 

[droid]

Nah, I haven't made a font in over a decade, and the stuff I did do was all bespoke agency work for corporate and governmental clients. I don't own them and I don't think any of them were ever made publicly available.

 

[luka]

dark pixel horse

 

[luka]

a lot of people dont dont know this but me and droid are allies

 

[Clinamenic]

a lot of people dont dont know this but me and droid are allies

I know all about your shared exploits.