How do you actually put a font together?
I originally wrote the first book for FontLab as a fun project in response to some vague requests from former graphic design and digital printing students. After forty years of graphic design and typography experience, I had begun to design fonts in the mid-1990s to use in my digital publishing textbooks. The fonts available never had the features I needed. I received a free copy of Fontographer with FreeHand. So I did it.
As a font designer, my only credentials are experience and practice tied to a growing body of customers who have purchased my experiments. I am not claiming superiority to anyone. I am simply sharing what I have learned. For me, self-taught is not a hostile epithet but a way of life.
This book is for graphic designers who love type and have gradually come to the place where the typography matters as much or more than the graphics. To rephrase that, this is for designers who have come to realize that almost all content is in the words and that typography is our most important skill.
My experience is that font designers are a wonderfully individualistic group of people. Our only shared attributes are a love of typography and strong opinions. But our differences stand out in that we cannot even find a common definition of the word typography. This is coupled with the fact that typographers are an inconspicuous niche of a relatively small trade.
Practical Font Design
The original book proved to be very popular. Currrently, a rewritten, expanded 3rd edition of the FontLab book including the second edition of part one and part two (on building book font families) plus new materials giving a practical walk through the process of designing a font and families is available. In addition is the new book applying the same attitude and expertise to Fontographer 5.1.
This is not about artistic considerations, but the practicalities of putting a font together. On the other hand, the design approach is fine art. David’s training is as a fine art printmaker: etchings & stone lithography. The basic procedure we use for font design is found in this book. It is a step by step following of new font designs with tips and comments along the way.
Click on a book’s cover for its own page with purchasing options.
Related articles
