[Fedora-fonts-list] Font design

[Ben Laenen]

On Friday 19 October 2007, Anne Wilson wrote:
> The reason I got the invitation to the list is because I had
> commented on the lack of decent free handwriting/script fonts.  I
> have a particular favourite closed-source one, and would like to see
> something similar in a free font. The problem is that I haven't a
> clue how to start.  Does anyone know of a reference page that would
> get a complete newbie to font design started?
>
> Anne

Before starting the real work by making such a font, first learn a bit 
to get familiar with FontForge: that's just learning how to make curves 
and lines, how to edit the shapes etc. The FontForge pages have an 
introduction at http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/fontforge-tutorial.pdf 
or at http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/editexample.html if you prefer 
html. Try to edit existing fonts, or just look at existing fonts, 
you'll learn a lot doing just that.

Secondly, also before starting with fontforge to create the font: draw 
up the design you have in mind on paper once (if you have a scanner you 
could use it afterwards as well as a background image on which you can 
draw the outlines in FontForge -- draw big enough for that :-) ). If 
you start with a new design it's quite important to draw it out once so 
you have a target, and you'll need to redo the same letters a few times 
probably, which is much easier on paper :-)

So, this is in short the first thing you need to do if you have to start 
from scratch. If you think you're familiar enough with FontForge you 
can try to start your script font.

One advice here: type design and font developing takes a long time, 
don't get discouraged because it seems to take forever. Certainly don't 
force it to go faster (that often results in redoing that glyph 
anyway).

If you encounter problems with FontForge, I invite you to go to our 
DejaVu Fonts IRC channel (#dejavu on freenode.org). We have used 
FontForge a lot so we can certainly help you, and we're an active 
community. You can find us there most of the time (during European 
daytime, I have no idea if the channel gets used during the 
night :-) ).

Greetings
Ben