As a graphic designer, you are probably obsessed with fonts, and who can blame you; after all, it’s your job. You work with fonts daily, you can identify them at a glance, and you’ve accumulated a mental list of go-tos and favorites. If this describes you, then you have, at some point, definitely wondered how to make a personal font from scratch for yourself.
Font creation is a long and tedious process, but typing in a font you designed can be incredibly rewarding. However, it’s important to note that you’re not only learning how to make a “font,” you’re also making a typeface.
What’s the difference? A typeface is a whole group of text styles you can use, often referred to as the “font family.” Arial, Helvetica, and Times New Roman are typefaces because you can use multiple styles (Regular, italic, bold, bold italic, etc). A font is just one of those text styles. Technically, Arial Bold is a font, but Arial is a typeface.
Read on to learn how to make a font from scratch.
Understanding what a font is
The word font refers to a set of printable or displayable typography or text characters in a specific style and size. Font styles are used in both print and digital text. While typographic font styles have custom spacing and design, once determined, this style will apply to both lowercase and uppercase letters as well as punctuation marks.
The type design for a set of fonts is the typeface, and variations of this design form the font family.
For example, Helvetica is a font family, while Helvetica italic is a typeface, and Helvetica italic 10-point is a font. In practice, font and typeface are often used as synonyms even though they represent slightly different aspects of a specific font.
Different font file formats
There are a variety of font file formats that can be used on both Windows and Mac computers. Some of the most common file formats are highlighted below:
- TrueType (.ttf) is a font file format developed by Apple and Microsoft. It is the most common format for fonts on both Windows and Mac computers.
- OpenType (.otf) is a file format for scalable, or outlined, font files that extend the existing TrueType font file format.
- PostScript Type 1 (.pfb and .afm) is a font file format developed by Adobe. It is commonly used on Windows and Mac computers.
- Web Open Font Format (.woff) was developed to provide a compact format for font files that can be used on websites.
- Bitmap (.bmp) uses a unit called a pixel to build symbols called glyphs that make up a total bitmap font. Bitmap fonts are most commonly seen in Adobe software.
How to create a font from scratch
The process below involves using Adobe Illustrator, but can also apply to other graphic design programs:
Know the kind of font you want to create
Start by setting the task and determining the set, style, and nature of the font. For the first font, it is better to choose the minimal character set. Answer the following questions in your notepad or a text editor:
- What font you are creating: sans serif, serif, slab serif;
- Where your font can be used: on the web, in print, in-store window design;
- How your font is positioned: ultra-modern font for a stylish project, or a classical font with a strict character that evokes a certain historical era or fits a certain trend;
- In what size and where the font will be used: in heading design, in apps, in posters, or online only?
Also, do your research. At this stage, it is worth choosing from 3 to 10 typefaces that are close to what you plan to design. Of course, you should not copy them in your project, but it is useful to study the graphic features, sizes, and other font parameters in order to understand the construction logic.
You also need to decide on the character set. This should already be done at the first stage, but this time you need to select in detail all the characters that you plan to draw. It can be one language, for example, basic Latin, numbers, and a punctuation set.
Sketch your ideas
The first step in creating custom fonts is to sketch your ideas on paper. You can use a pencil, a pen, a marker, or any other tool that you prefer. You can draw inspiration from existing fonts, shapes, symbols, or your own imagination.
Try to experiment with different styles, weights, widths, and angles. You can also think about how your font will look in different contexts, such as headlines, body text, or logos. Sketching your ideas will help you refine your vision and prepare for the next step.
Decide what type of font (or typeface) you’d like to make
This goes hand-in-hand with sketching your ideas. The two most basic typeface classifications are serif and sans serif. The “serif” category contains any typeface with small “feet” at the end of letters. Times New Roman, Georgia, and Cambria are serif fonts.
Sans serif, on the other hand, has no feet. Arial, Helvetica, Calibri, and Comic Sans are sans-serif typefaces.
After that, the classifications get far more complicated. You can create display typefaces, script typefaces, and retro typefaces—check out font sites like Adobe Typekit or Dafont to see all of the different categories and get inspired.
Scan and vectorize
The next step is to scan your sketches and convert them into digital files. You can use a scanner, a camera, or a smartphone app to capture your drawings.
Adobe Illustrator is one of the best programs to use for font creation because you need to work with vectors. Photoshop and InDesign store information in pixels, which means that any image has the opportunity to lose quality when scaled down or become pixelated when scaled up. Vectors, on the other hand, store information in a series of geometric shapes and points.
You can resize a vector to any size and it will never lose quality—which is how fonts are built, too.
In Illustrator, create a new document. You’re going to need a ton of artboards, but they can be pretty small and you can use any square-shaped size.
Create one artboard for every character you will need to create. If you want to design just uppercase letters, you will only need 26 artboards. For both upper and lowercase, use 52. However, for a basic set of letters and numbers and common punctuation symbols, create 80 artboards.
You’ll need more if you want to create accented letters, special characters, or a full set of symbols. Most typefaces you find on Google Docs or Adobe Typekit have around 1,500 characters.
Once you have your artboards and dimensions set, click “ok” and create your document.
Draw the characters
If you started with step two instead, you can then move to drawing rectangles and circles and using the Pathfinder tool from font creator software to create customized shapes for each letter. You can use the pen tool to draw complex letterforms, and you can copy and paste similar characters. (A lowercase d and b are often the same but flipped. An exclamation point can be your lowercase “i,” upside down.)
Pay attention to letterforms that look similar—you might want to differentiate your lowercase “L” and uppercase “I” to keep them from looking exactly the same; your zero and uppercase “O” as well.
Technical part
A font is not just a set of rendered characters, it is a product that can be used in software.
After the design-centered part of the work, the technical stage begins. It is this stage that determines how well the created font will work. For your first font, you can team up with a more experienced specialist to help with the technical part of the job.
Conventionally, this stage consists of three stages: mastering, kerning and TrueType hinting.
Mastering is the checking and editing of contours, components, diacritics, and other elements of a font. At this stage, OpenType features are created, and meta-information inside the font is filled.
Kerning is the process in which the spacing between letters is brought to perfection. Simply put, at this time, the instances in which there is too much white space between the letters are corrected. This stage occurs after the spacing work is completed.
Hinting is the visual markup of a font for the correct display of small sizes in various operating systems.
Export as .svg files
Once you’re done with your letterforms, go to File > Export for Screens. Make sure you have all of your artboards selected and choose “.svg” as the output file type. No need to resize the boards—this file type retains the vector form, so they can be enlarged or shrunk later without losing quality.
Press “export artboards”.
Compress it into a .ttf or .otf file.
There are several different options for font creation software, so feel free to browse the web. Most programs will allow you to import your letterforms into a small file for each letter, customizing the spacing and placement of each.
At the end of the process, export your typeface design in one of the two common file types—.ttf or .otf. Once this file is created, anyone can install the font you made on their computer.
On a Mac, double-click any typeface file to open Font Book. Simply click “install.” If you have Windows 10, you can do the same thing.
Tools and software used to make fonts from scratch
There is a lot of software for working with fonts; here are the ones type designers use often:
- Glyphs;
- Fontlab;
- Robofont;
- FontForge;
- Fontographer.
Glyphs and Fontlab stand out since most specialists use them. This is due to the convenience of the interface, a variety of tools, and adaptability to the user. We recommend that you get acquainted with 2-3 different software, study their functionality, and understand which is most comfortable to work in. Many provide a trial period, so it won’t require a lot of resources.
Later, you should choose one software and work in it, increasing your experience and improving your type design skills.
Conclusion on how to make a font from scratch
Making a font from scratch for the first time can cause fear of the unknown, as it is a very difficult process and lots of beginners feel like they can’t do it.
Dare to create your first font, because in the future you will remember it with warm nostalgia. Make mistakes, experiment, create imperfect fonts, and make changes to them — over time, you will understand in which direction to continue.
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