In the previous part, I explained the importance of learning how to create a font. This part explained the parts of a font and how they work together. I mentioned a few popular font families including Georgia, Arial, Palatino, and Consolas. Then I explained about the anatomy of a typeface family, including the effects that ligatures have on the typeface. I ended the article by discussing the different effects that weights have on letterforms and the different ways that letters can be modified.
In the next part, I will explain how to create a font from a traced image. In the previous article, I discussed how to use a program like Adobe Illustrator to create a font from a scanned image. In this article, I will demonstrate how to create a font from a scanned image. I am going to use the same font that I used in the previous article. I have just modified it so that it is easier for me to type. The font that I will be using is called Helvetica.
First, I downloaded a picture of a handwritten word from the Internet. (I used a free service, so you do not have to pay for anything.) I opened the picture in Photoshop, then changed the size of the font so that it would be easy to see all the details. Next, I tried out several different letterforms, including Courier, Times New Roman, and Palatino, with the menus positioned above the text box.
After creating a variety of custom fonts, it became clear that there were only a few options left. One option was to download a font that is already set up and ready to use. The other option was to create a font from scratch. I decided to create a custom font from scratch because I had no experience with designing font faces.
The next step was to create a custom brush. I downloaded an image of a custom brush that I used to paint lettering on schoolboards. I decided to place this image on the actual brush that I used to design the face of the custom brush. In the step two section of the How to Create a Font instruction, I created a small border around the upper edge of the custom brush so that the resulting font would have an even thickness.
In the third step, I copied over the portion of each of the four sides of the custom font that I used to create the letterforms. (The copied letters are the same size as the original letters.) (Note: This is not necessary if you are simply creating a variation of the Times New Roman or the Arial family of fonts. This is especially true for the Times and Arial families which contain very similar letterforms.)
The fourth and final step was to fill in the missing spaces with color. I used the flat colors that I was using for the border letters in the first step of how to create a font. I then used the Roman style hand-drawn letterforms to fill in the spaces in the upper half of the original faces of the letters. (The ones that are a bit bigger than your actual size.) Finally, I aligned the alignment of the letters with the grid lines of my design.
After completing all four steps in how to create a font, I made one final step in how to create a font with a traced image. I dragged the traced image onto the correct area of my custom brush tool so that it would be filled in correctly. (I used the same grid lines as the ones from the previous step.)