Granted, some of these aren’t entirely that recent, but I haven’t posted about fonts in a while. All three of these fonts are from one of my favorite font designers, Billy Argel. All of them have somewhat of a western feel to them, which I enjoy. They can be downloaded free for personal use, but commercial licenses can be purchased if you need one.

1. Body Hunter

2. Outlaw

3. Monbijoux

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We all need a little inpiration every once in a while, and as we all know, typography is a huge part of design. Designers have been forever experimenting with type, and what a better way to share than good ‘ol Flickr. I’ve made a list of some of the best Typography Flickr groups to feed your creative appetite. Click each Imge to visit the groups. (The groups are in no particular order)

Typophile

I.Love.Typography

Typography *

Found Type

Vintage Type

Wood Type

Typography and Lettering

Folk Typography

I ♥ Typography

Your Typography

• Typography • INSPIRATION • David Carson •

fonts&typography

handmade_typography/lettering

Typography of the World

i love typography

Design & Typography

Calligraphy

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I’ve got another demo font to release to everyone. I call this one Whiteboard Modern and It’s a little different then my usual style. Whiteboard Modern was hand drawn, but created entirely with a Wacom tablet and Illustrator. Anyway, I was just wanting to try something new and see what I could come up with. I’m learning more each time. Hope you like the demo :)

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Before I start, let me say that this is by no means the only way to make a hand drawn font. Ever since I began giving away fonts, I’ve had many requests for me to write a tutorial on my font making process, so here it is. This is how I do it, and depending on your responses, I can go deeper into a FontLab Studio tutorial. This tutorial, however, is designed to reveal my process from start to finish. A lot of you may not have FontLab Studio, so you may need to adapt the second half of the tutorial to whatever font software you may have access to. Here we go.

1. The Tools

I like to use India Ink and a primitive Bamboo Pens (above) to draw my characters, but you can even just use a pencil and paper if you like. You can get both the items pictured above really cheap (< $10 total) from your local art supply store or Hobby Lobby, etc.

2. Start Drawing

Take whatever tools you choose to use and start cranking out letter forms. It’s ok to mess up, just draw the letter again. But keep cranking them out until you’re happy with what you’ve got. I like to lay all of the finished ones out in front of me so I can see what I already have and what I still need. The squiggly lines are just where I got rid of some excess ink from the tip of the bamboo pen before sketching.

3. Scan

Next, I scan the images in at a relatively high resolution.

4. Bump up the Contrast

In order to get a better final result, I adjust the contrast of the scan. I typically convert my image to grayscale, then use Levels (Control/Command + L) to make the whites whiter and the blacks blacker. Then save as a high-res jpeg.

5. Open the Scans in Illustrator

I use an “outline font editor” (FontLab Studio) which is another way to say that the final product needs to be a vector. I use Illustrator’s Live Trace to vectorize the shapes. So next, I open the jpeg scans in Illustrator.

6. Live Trace

Vectorize your image using Live Trace to get the results your happy with, then hit “Expand.” So now you have something like below.

7. Ungroup

After you Live Trace, ungroup the objects.

8. Get Rid of the White Shapes

After ungrouping I use the Magic Wand tool, and click on any of the white space in and around the letters. This selects all of the white shapes at the same time, and then I delete them.

So now all that remains is the black shapes. Notice the bounding box. There is no more whitespace around the edges compared to just after live trace above.

9. Prepare the Font Editor

It’s now time to fire up the font editor of your choice. I use FontLab Studio ($649) but it’s not the only one. TypeTool is a $99 Font Editor from the same people who make FontLab Studio. If you’re not looking for anything fancy, that’s the one I recommend (Windows, Mac), and it’s affordable compared to other products on the market. FontForge is a freeware font editor, but I believe it’s Windows only.

Depending on which editor you plan on using, the next part might be a little different than your software, but you can get the general idea, and adjust accordingly. If you use TypeTool, it should be very similar, since the software I use is from the same company.

Create a new blank font file.

Go to File > Font Info.

Fill out the information that describes your font. Family Name, Weight, Bold or not, etc. This information is important and will be embedded in the file in it’s final form.

10. Copy/Paste

Start copying/pasting your characters (paths) one-by-one from Illustrator into their corresponding slots in your font editor.

11. Adjust

Adjust Each character’s paths to your liking in the font editor. You can always go back and make adjustments if you don’t get it right the first time. And again, I can’t go too deep into this if you aren’t using FontLab Studio, but I’m sure you can find some info in your software’s help section, or google :)

Here’s a peek at what one of my completed fonts looks like in the font editor.

12. Generate Your Font

Go to File > Generate Font….

Choose your format (.ttf will work fine for both Mac and PC) and Save!

Done!

Like I said, this isn’t the only way to do this, it’s just the way I happen to do it. You can draw your letters with the pencil tool directly in Illustrator if you feel like it. There are many different ways, I just wanted to share my process with everyone, since you’ve been wondering. I hope you enjoyed the tutorial :)

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I almost forgot I had this font laying around. It’s called 23rd Street, and it’s another free demo version font for everyone to download. It’s not my best font, but it’s still a font :) Click here if you’re interested in the full version. I just started a big project, so I’ll get on those vectors in a couple days. I’ve also been listening to all of the comments about a portfolio wordpress theme, and I think I might be able to come up with something sufficient. Time will tell. Hope you like the font :)

The Demo Version includes both upper, and lowercase A-Z:

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I’d like to let all of my readers know about a new contest with $1000 in prizes up for grabs. Caleb from LostAndTaken has launched his first contest, and yours truly will be the judging the project. There are prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, and the theme is none other than the 2008 election. Submit your political poster designs to enter. Head on over to check out the details and the prizes. This should be a fun contest, good luck!

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I’ve got another free demo version font for everyone. It’s called Tire Shop. I include upper and lowercase in my demo fonts, but in this case, the lowercase is the same as the uppercase. However, I did include both upper and lower in the font file itself, so you won’t have to worry about using shift or capslock. I know I’ve been on a font binge lately, but hey, its a freebie right? Anyway, hope you can find a good use for it. :)

Here’s a look at the characters. If you’re interested in buying the full version, you can see the full character map here, on myfonts.com

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It’s done! Conglomerfont is a free font created by myself and the design community from all over the world, on nearly every continent via email. I asked people to send individual letters to my inbox, and I coagulated the submissions into a single font, hence the name, Conglomerfont. Below you’ll find a list of all of the contributors, and a link to their websites. Thanks to everyone who participated, and if you didn’t get into the font this time around, don’t worry, I plan on doing another conglomerfont in the future. :)

Here’s a look at the character set.

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This is a project I’ve started here at BittBox as a community effort to create a free font so that everyone who’s willing can have a hand in the creation process. It will be a 100% free typeface, and anyone who wants to help can design a character/letter of their choosing. Let’s make history :) !!!!!

This is how it works:

Below, you’ll find a few tables with all of the characters slated to be a part of this community-created font. Items marked with an “X” have already been accounted for, everything else is free game. People (everyone besides me) can choose a character that they want to design, create a hand-drawn character, and email it to me in jpeg or tiff format to jhilgert00(at)gmail.com. I will then use my software (Font Lab Studio) and create a font from all of the individual submitted characters, and I’ll give it away for free, right here on BittBox. Bookmark this page if your are interested in contributing, I will be updating the list of characters often.

I can’t guarantee that your character will be used because there will likely be multiple submissions for the same character in between the time I update this page, but don’t worry, this is only the first of many BittBox Community Fonts.

Each person who submits a character used in the font will get credit, as well as a link. When the font is complete and I make the post to give it away, I will include the tables below in that post, with each character, it’s creator, and a link for each contributor, as a credit to everyone who participated. So, if you submit, please make sure to clearly state what name and URL you want included in the credits for the font in your email.

For this first run, I’m only including uppercase, lowercase, and 0-9. If the project goes well, we can expand the character set with the next community font :)

I’ll post thumbnails of the included characters as I receive them.

I’ll post thumbnails of the included characters as I receive them.

I’ll post thumbnails of the included characters as I receive them.

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Hey everyone, I’ve got a free font for you to download, and before you start blowing up the comments, let me explain why it’s a “demo” version. I recently started to sell some fonts on MyFonts.com as a secondary source of income. I have a contract with MyFonts, and giving away a demo version is the only way to still be able to share something with you, without violating my contract. Make sense? Ok, anyway the demo version only means its not the full version, you may use this font for personal and commercial projects.

Here’s a look at the character set:

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I’m proud to release my very first original free font here on BittBox, BB Petie Boy. (Named after a horse I had when I was younger) There are four weights, one of which is a barely legible grunge style. The ‘Destroyed’ weight is the only one without punctuation. Light, Medium, and Heavy all have the necessary characters for typing. Now, before you ask, yes these are free fonts. You can use them in anything you want, even if you sell your design, you just can’t redistribute these fonts, or host them on a server. Anyway, it’s my first font ever. I still have a lot to earn, but I hope you can give some feedback on how to make the next one better. If you have any problems installing, please let me know, but the fonts should work in both Windows and OS X. (not sure about Linux) Previews after the jump.

BB Petie Boy Light

BB Petie Boy Medium

BB Petie Boy Heavy

BB Petie Boy Destroyed

Download All 4 Fonts (.ttf)

Includes: – ZIP (1)

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Now, before I start, not everyone is going to think these are all useful, so if you don’t ever use tree silhouettes, fine. But some of us do. Personally, I love dingbats because (most of the time) I convert them to vectors in Illustrator and use them as very large elements in some cases. All you have to do is use the font in Illustrator and then go to Type > Create Outlines, and Bam. You got yourself a vector to work with. Here are some dingbat fonts that I thought you might enjoy.

1. Geobats

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I found a great little font here that I want to share with everyone called Panhead, by Billy Argel. Billy is a great font artist, and if you pay attention to his fonts, he includes lots of little hidden gems in his character sets. In this case, some killer swirly curls/floral dingbats. The reason I like them so much is because you can easily “create outlines” (in the Type menu) in Illustrator to convert these dingbats to good old fashioned vectors.

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A very welcome new feature in Leopard is the ability to view fonts directly in the finder (Yay!). You can get a full-alphabet-preview in two places: Column view, and Quick Look. The rest of the views display an icon with the letters “Ag.” Hitting spacebar from any view will give you and alphabet preview (in Quick Look). No need to open Fontbook, or a 3rd party browser anymore whoohoo! Anything that saves a little time, and makes my life a little easier is worth a post. Hope it makes your life easier as well :)

Source: macosxhints

Click on the images for a larger view.

From Column view, click on the little preview arrow to reveal the alphabetic font preview. (I made my column wider for posting purposes).

Font icons display as “Ag.”

Hit the Spacebar from any view and Quick Look gives you an Alphabet preview of the font!

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New grunge-type time folks. Actually, you might even call this a grungy script font. Ohlo de Boi by Billy Argel is not only a decent looking grunge font, but has a lot of extra characters, unlike the majority of (free) grunge fonts.

A quick look at the main character set:

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Another nice font release from Gyom over at Last Soundtrack has hit the web. I’m a loyal fan of Gyom because he consistently releases great fonts, and all he requires for a commercial (full) license is a donation in the amount of your choosing! To me, Birth of a Hero seems to be geometric and grungy at the same time, which could prove quite useful in certain applications. See what you think, and maybe download it and keep it in the bag for later.

Preview

Birth of A Hero also has plenty of the extra characters that most free fonts fail to deliver. Here’s a quick look at the main character set:

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In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a sucker for fonts. Here’s another good one you shouldn’t miss – Myndraine by Christopher Miller. Not only is it decent looking and clean, Myndraine is a pretty robust font, with tons of extra characters and uncommon glyphs. The download includes both .ttf (true type) and .otf (open type) formats! You may not have a use for this font now, but I always like to keep them in the bag for later. I can picture this font used in a website/blog logo. Also, if you are a font junkie and a BittBox regular, you will notice that “Fonts” is the latest addition to the categories. (p.s. More additions/features coming very soon ;)

Here’s a quick look at the character set:

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