If you’ve always thought your handwriting is so much better than
many fonts out there, then maybe it’s time you made your mark: literally. Creating your own font isn’t as hard as it seems—all you need is a pen, a paper, a little program-know-how, and a comprehensible penmanship.Oh, and Macromedia’s Fontographer and Adobe Illustrator.
1.)Write down alphabet. If you have a WACOM or any other drawing tablet, then you can just doodle right on to Photoshop or whatever photo editing software you have. If you don’t have one, then a pen and paper will do—plus a scanner. Scan it using highest resolution possible, so you’ll get a pretty accurate scribble for your font.
2.)Edit it. If you think your penmanship is perfect way it is, noise and all, then skip this part. But if you think it needs a little more work, go ahead and clean it up using Photoshop or whatever photo editing software you use. Now you’ll have to save each letter as an individual file.
3.)Open Fontographer. This is where your font comes to life. Go to File menu and choose “new font”. Double click on letter “A”, and a window will pop up. It’s time to get busy.
4.)Cut and paste, edit if you like. Copy letter “A” that you have in Photoshop or whatever program you used, and paste it in Fontographer window. This is “guide” for your font—it’s not actually a font yet. Now select “Outline” from layers menu, then click on “Auto Trace” from Element menu. This lets Fontographer trace edges of your font for you. Twiddle with settings on Auto Trace to achieve your desired tracing effect. If Auto Trace didn’t seem to do such a good job at certain corners, you can always correct it. Use arrow tool to edit points. This takes practice to master, so be patient.
