How To Create Your Own Font
Why create your own font? Not only is creating your own font beneficial for your brand and marketing, but it also cuts the cost of having to hire someone to create it for you. It will save you time, money, and effort when you are able to do this fairly simple task on your own. Not to mention the ability to influence the font design process of every single step of the way so you are left with your vision and not someone else’s.
Following are the best examples and tips to get started on developing creative fonts. Whether you want to create the font for your logo, promotional materials, or even to keep a project consistent, this guide will give you the tools needed to achieve a chic, modern, simple or unique font.
You will be creating something unique for your audience, something that will create an experience for those who want to be involved and support your brand.
Font Design Process
1.) Outline Your Font Idea
Begin the process with some brainstorming. Some questions to ask yourself as you begin the design process:
- Is the font for a specific project or overall brand?
- Is the font only for a logo?
- Will you need to create different sizes of the font?
- Does the new font need to work with other existing fonts used?
Search out and find inspiration on design sites like Tumblr, Pinterest or DevZum.
2.) Choose Font Editor Software
After you have completed your brainstorming session and created an outline, choose a software that works best for you. We tend to lean more towards open-source font editors for beginners because they generally will help you along the way when creating your custom font. At the end of this article, you will find a list of font editor programs you can use.
3.) Start Font Design
Once you have downloaded font design software and tools, you will need to put all that work you outlined into action. Each software is unique so there will be different learning curves depending on what program you choose, but we have included a list of terms to get you familiar with the common vocabulary you will face thanks to Elegant Themes.
Glyph: Each individual character within a font is considered a glyph.
Baseline: The invisible line on which all of the font characters sit.
Ascender Line: The invisible line at which ascenders begin.
Ascender Height: The height of the upward vertical stroke on letters such as “h” and “k”.
Descender Depth: The depth of the downward vertical stroke on letters such as “p” and “y”.
Stem: The main vertical stroke of a letter such as “F” and “T”.
Bowl: The closed rounded part of letters such as “b”, “d” and “o”.
Bézier Curve: A parametric formula used to model smooth scalable curves.
4.) Refine Font Design
Refine your design! Make sure it’s how you want it. When you look over your font design project, be sure to include every aspect you want in a set of characters. Fix any errors you might have skimmed over while in the design process. This is the moment in which you have one last look over your project to ensure you have created something that will work for the project you plan on using it for.
5.) Upload Font Design to WordPress
If the intended use for your font is on your own WordPress website, there are a number of upload methods available. The simplest method is through the font plugin Use Any Font.
This plugin automatically converts your font files, extracts the CSS code and embeds it into the theme files. It supports TTF, OTF, and WOFF files, and once uploaded the font will be available for use in WordPress. This plugin permits one free font conversion and unlimited conversions after a donation of $20 or more.
Check out this link if you want to learn more on how to utilize your font. This is a great guide on how to incorporate your font with a refreshed logo!
Common Font Design Mistakes
Graphic design and typography go hand in hand, it’s important that you understand some rules of design before you jump into typography without prior knowledge.
- Don’t make the font too small. You want to make sure that it can be read from the appropriate distance and for all forms of media you expect use it for.
- Watch your spacing. If you are creating a logo for a storefront, you need to make sure that someone can clearly read it. Characters too close together can create confusion.
- Don’t get too busy with your font. Subtle and simple goes a long way when it comes to design, especially since the most timeless forms of design are minimalist bold graphics. Keep your font simple and to the point with a small creative twist.
Font Editor Programs:
FontForge
FontForge is perfect for those who are brand new to creating fonts and dealing with graphic design.
Birdfont
Birdfont is highly customizable and easy to use. While it might offer more advanced tools, they make it easy to use the software. Perfect for beginners and advanced graphic designers.