Fontlab Studio – Part 3: Ligatures from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

Preview of the fonts in the bundle:

Creating a Font in Fontlab – Part 1 from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

Correction: The “ascender would be the height of a “lowercase” h, not a capital H.

Link for setting up the Illustrator Template.

List of Unicode characters on Wikipedia

Fontlab Studio 5: The Preview Panel from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

1. Body Hunter

2. Outlaw

3. Monbijoux

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

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 :)

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

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

Here’s a look at the character set.

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.

Here’s a look at the character set:

BB Petie Boy Light

BB Petie Boy Medium

BB Petie Boy Heavy

BB Petie Boy Destroyed

Download All 4 Fonts (.ttf)

Includes: – ZIP (1)

1. Geobats

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!

A quick look at the main character set:

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: