<noframes> <body> When I first started to distribute my fonts on the internet there were about a dozen type foundries on the World Wide Web. Now there are hundreds. The popularity of the independent internet-based type foundry has exploded over the years. Using this tutorial any competent designer can make a handful of fonts, build a web page to display them, and boom! there's another new font company. With so many designers starting their own online "foundries," there are a lot of people wondering how they can do it themselves. This online tutorial is the most easy way to start making your own font. This tutorial provides you step by step procedure to make custom fonts. Read carefully all 10 steps and you'll master the art of making fonts. Okay. Fine. I'll let the secret out. This tutorial explains my personal font-making technique. It may not be the academically approved typographic design process, but it works for me, and it can be done on any Mac or PC with the proper software installed. You've been working with the alphabet since you were a small child. Now you can make a font of your own. Step 2 First thing you'll need is the hardware : * A pen or some other device that makes a mark on paper * A piece of paper. A napkin will do if you can't find any paper * A computer with a scanner. Here are two pieces of specialty software you will need for making fonts : * Adobe Streamline : Converts your grayscale scan into an eps (Encapsulated Post Script) file which you can open and edit in Illustrator. * Macromedia Fontographer: This is the program that makes fonts. Also, you should be somewhat familiar with the following software : * Adobe Photoshop : Use this to scan your artwork in and clean it up if you want. * Adobe Illustrator : Used as a clipboard for importing your outlines into Fontographer. Got all that? Great! Let's draw the alphabet in the next step... Step 3 Here's the alphabet I'll be fontifying for you today: I decided to call this one "Gobbler," and the original artwork is shown here at the actual size. I drew it on a napkin while having breakfast at the Modern Cafe in Minneapolis. I like the way the napkin randomly absorbed ink to create interesting splotches at the ends of the strokes. When drawing your alphabet, keep in mind that it'll be troublesome if the characters overlap. If they do, you'll have to cut them apart later. So I'd recommend keeping each letter separate from the others, and leaving plenty of space between the lines. I scanned my napkin into Photoshop at 100% (as seen here) at a resolution of 200 pixels per inch. My computer sucks, but if you've got one of them fancy new computers you might want to scan it in at 300 dpi. Whatever. I'm a lo-fi guy. Next, I'm gonna take the alphabet into Streamline to convert it from a grayscale PICT file to post-script outline format. Streamline lets you control the detail of your image based on details per inch, so I need to make it bigger to get the detail I want out of it. In Photoshop under "Image: Image Size" I "uprez" the image to about 8.5 inches by 11 inches, at around 150 dpi. Now I'm ready to exit Photoshop, so I save the file as a grayscale PICT with no compression. </body> </noframes>
