So subsetting fonts gives us more typographic options! The Google Fonts API supports that: you can load a subset of a Google Font with just the glyphs you need by appending &text=theglyphsyouneed to your query. Loading that whole typeface could make the page noticeably slower, but loading only those 5 glyphs doesn’t make a big difference. But does it have to be that way? Let’s say you’d like put the word Autumn in some special font on your homepage for the end-of-season sale. So every time a designers asks a developer to add more fonts, they get pushback. Notice how compared to web pages, some print magazines show many more typefaces? We’re used to using few typefaces online, because loading more fonts makes the page slow. You can just make one yourself with by slicing up R, C and B and combining them with dashes. Like when you just got the perfect font for a retail website but there is no ₹, € or ฿ in it. More than once I ran into the issue of finding a font missing glyphs I really needed. After all, I only need the numbers 0–9 and a colon! Why create custom fonts?īesides icon fonts and ridiculously big countdown timers, there are three use cases for custom fonts I think are important. For years I’ve been thinking of making my own typeface, so I thought it would be a nice exercise to figure out how feasible that would be. There were dozens of features I found more important than those tiny details, so I ignored the ink traps until it started to bug me that when in use, the UI blends out and all users see are those huge numbers. Spoiler: I created custom versions for all numbers anyway. When making this screenshot I realized that only the 7 and 2 clearly show an ink trap. They complained about ‘ink traps or something’. And of course that caught the eyes of some designers using it. As a result, even on a medium-sized display every detail of a font will become visible. I put a lot of effort in making sure the numbers are as big as possible on any screen. Its biggest feature is that it’s, well, big. In case you don’t know it yet: I want to make the best countdown timer for design workshops. add a stroke, color.A while ago I was asking for feedback on my countdown timer application, Big Timer. Now, you can really tweak things…type single letters and skew them. On the left, is a hand-lettered example and on the right, it’s the font. I don’t know about Macs but in Winders, you simply right, click and Install the font. In the end, you fill out the Font info in the settings and export the file to create a truetype font! Simple. Now…do this over and over…until you have all your uppercase, lowercase and any symbols you might use. See the box around the letters, you move those bars to determine baseling, kerning etc. (you can also draw in birdfont using their tools but it’s pretty tough). See how it’s all points and curves? You can tweak these. You simply click on a letter, enter its editor and import your vector! Here’s what that looks like. This can easily be imported into Birdfont! Now, I created another file in which to drop the single letters and save the file as an svg I set this up years ago when doing work for Lisa Frank (yes…I went there.I’m a whore.) Then, I tweak the settings in Live Trace to simplify any small wiggles and imperfections. So how to clean them up and make them nice and neat? Illustrator’s “Live Trace” Feature! I save the lettering file as a psd and open it in illustrator. You can see how rough they look even when drawing them this large: Then, I scanned ’em in at a nice, high resolution. Initially, I drew my letters by hand, as usual but I drawed them real big-like. Now that I had the thing, I started creating the font by using Photoshop, Illustrator and Birdfont. You can get the free version, but for 5 bucks you can get upgrades and stuff…so I opted to blow 5 bucks. What I found after much research was Birdfont. So I went out looking for a good FREE font creating software. I’ve always lettered my cartoon work with a unique hand-drawn font and I’ve really become accustomed to it but, it’s a real pain and not near as fun as drawing the actual cartoon. …AND SAVE YOURSELF A CRAPLOAD OF WORK!…”what?” You say?Ĭreate a font to replace your hand-inked font that takes forever to do!
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