Creating Fonts with Fontself, Illustrator, and Photoshop
1h 22mIntermediate2020-05-18
Authors
Tony Harmer
Educator, Illustrator, Adobe Creative Suite Master
Course details
Fontself Maker is an extension for Illustrator and Photoshop that allows you to turn any lettering into unique OpenType fonts. In this course, instructor Tony Harmer shows you how to get the most out of this powerful extension. After stepping through how to install Fontself Maker, Tony goes over some basic typography terms to help you grasp the mechanics of designing type. He then demonstrates how to create fonts in Illustrator, explaining how to set font metrics with guides and use Live Paint to create color font glyphs that can be used to create an OpenType-SVG color font. Next, he delves into font creation in Photoshop, including how to create both bitmap and vector fonts. Plus, get tips for refining your font by adjusting glyph sizes, spacing, and kerning attributes.
Skills covered
TypographyIllustratorPhotoshopMotion Graphics and VFXGraphic DesignAdobeAnimation and IllustrationOne-Off
Concepts
Introduction
- Welcome to Typocracy
- Acquire and install Fontself
- Essential typography terms
- Understanding the baseline
- A quick start in Illustrator
- A quick start in Photoshop
Key Illustrator Skills
- Essential knowledge
- Compound paths and shapes
- Optimizing artwork
Creating Fonts in Illustrator
- Setting metrics with guides
- Artwork preparation and font creation
- Deleting and replacing glyphs
- Creating color fonts
- Using Live Paint to create color fonts
Creating Fonts in Photoshop
- Creating bitmap fonts in Photoshop
- Removing white backgrounds
- Using the Guides2Layers.jsx script
- Creating vector fonts in Photoshop
Refining Your Font
- Adjusting glyph sizes
- Spacing and kerning
- Creating alternates
- Accents
- Ligatures
- Saving your font
Conclusion
- Template files