How to Design Your Own Font?

Fonts have become a staple element and key component in many applications, including graphic design and data visualizations. Creating your own font is a personalized touch you add to your card, flyers, or any visuals you produce.

Are you tired of using an already existing font or are you thinking of customizing a font because you haven’t found the right look for a new project? A font can be a representation of your brand; your audience or potential clients will be able to recognize that the visual has been designed by you.

What are the Benefits of Creating a Customized Font?

Even though creating your own fonts can be time-consuming, expensive, and call for some technical expertise, you can explore different paid or free software tools that will take these into consideration. You’ll want to be clear on the intended use of the font, and how much time and financial investment you want to put into its development.

If it’s just for fun or casual use, you can stick to free basic fonts. Let’s say you want to produce a font for a particular project, you may want to take some time to learn the tools and the techniques. If you’re planning to create a font that is expected to be used by others, we would recommend you invest more time in the development process and more money on highly sophisticated software.

How To Create Your Very Own Font?

If you’re interested in creating a customized font, you’ll need to address a few basic considerations:

Step 1

Just as with any other design project, write out an outline. This is an important first step. Questions to keep in mind before drawing up your creative design summary:

1. Is this font to be used for a distinct project or will it have a broad spectrum of usage?
2. What will be the size and shape of the font?
3. What should your basic font type be?
4. Are there any fonts you find particularly appealing?

Step 2

Many experts recommend that you design the font on a piece of paper. Paper is an easy, quick, and time-saving method for drafting a design summary.

Step 3

Choose a tool that will be the right fit for you and download it. Whether you’re creating for your own use or for a potential client, there are a number of free and paid applications available. Below we have featured multiple tools that will suit your specific needs.

Step 4

After penning down your design and installing the software, you can start creating your font. Depending upon the software, you’ll either upload images of the paper drawing or directly start drawing.

Each software will have its own learning curve and offer variations in characters, shapes, and editing methods. This part is the most time-consuming task, but you’ll get the hang of things and that will speed up the process. 

Step 5

The final leg in creating a custom font is to use them as you desired. You can always upload your font on your own WordPress and there are several ways available to upload it. The use of a plugin is the simplest way to upload.

Instead of adding multiple plugins that can slow down your website, you can use your own CSS code. There are other media such as posters and signs for which you can upload your font to create the desired work.

Basic and Advanced Tools 

Choose the tool that is the best fit for you even if it’s for individual use or for a client. We’ve listed below both free and paid tools that will help you to kick-start this process.

Calligraphr 

This is an impressive tool that enables you to create a font based on your handwriting. All you gotta do to have your own font is print out a template and write out a sample of your handwriting with a black pen. Next, take a picture and upload it on the website where it will automatically generate the font.

Fonts created on Calligrapher can be used on your computer. Though it’s completely free, you can’t work on multiple fronts simultaneously and there is a limit on the number of characters a font can carry. Obviously, there is a paid version available without any limitations.

FontStruct 

A free browser-based tool that allows you to build your own typography and lets you download it at any point. You can get your hands on existing fonts that were uploaded by others by browsing and downloading them.

This tool will help you to create an authentic and accurate design for every pixel. The boxes, circles, and squares will be of extreme use in creating a customized font. Get motivation from other creations in the gallery and download them if you find that they match your taste. You are required to create a FrontStruct account, but it’s absolutely free and easy to get started.

Fonty 

This is also another handwriting-based font maker but for an Android app. Here you would be writing on a screen which is a tad bit harder when compared to writing on a piece of paper. You can always use a tablet to create a custom font. 

You can make fonts easily available in other apps by downloading the Fonty keyboard within this application. The other essential feature it offers is the automatic saving of your work, it supports all sorts of characters, lets you add shapes, and allows you to perfectly customize a font using the eraser tool.

Fontlab 

This font builder is free for a 30-day trial period, after which you’re required to pay to keep using this tool. This is available in Mac and Windows and comes with a variety of features that you couldn’t find on other free font makers. It can be treated like a Photoshop tool but its primary purpose is creating customized fonts for super-specific editing purposes.

Moreover, a tool called FontAduit can inspect or review inconsistencies and odd curves in your drawing process. Keep in mind that the tool can be good for precise editing and it should be your last resort when looking for font makers.

Metaflop 

Yet again another browser-based font builder. It is a user-friendly tool with highly customizable content and a list of variables you can tweak to alter the font into precisely what you want. You will also get to see how the font will appear if it’s in lowercase, uppercase, and in full sentences.

This will give you a perspective on how real the font will look while using it. Dive right into the tool and start creating wonderful fonts, which you can later download by choosing either the open-type font or Webfont.

Start Designing

We hope that the above list of tools and tips for customizing a font will offer you some valuable know-how on the approach that works best for you. If you want to stand out from the crowd, we recommend that you get started creating your very own customized font.

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