Pfd5 Gone by Bergsland, David -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Practical Font Design With FontLab 5 Why a final edition?

This is a small, one-person, low budget operation

New procedure

What are biggest problems when starting to build a font? Here’s a 10-step procedure to design your font

Naming The New Font

Now it’s time to begin One: Begin with a sample font or a new blank font using Open>> New

Setting up the Font Information

Two: Fill out the Font Info dialog box Recommended file info Names and Copyright Version and Identification The most important part? Metrics and Dimensions Converting blank font into a usable start

Starting to draw

There are many ways to start a glyph: You don’t need as much as you think FontLab drawing techniques

Determine your letterspacing

Display or text [how tight or loose] What’s the primary use of the font? What to use for the measurements? 1= Right sidebearing of I 55 2= Right sidebearing of H 50 3= Left sidebearing of I 40 4= Sidebearing of O 30 5= Minimum Sidebearing 20 6= Zero or negative sidebearing <0 1= Sidebearing of H 120 2= A little less than H 100 3= Half sidebearing 75 4= Sidebearing of O 60 5= Minimum Sidebearing 30 Some letterspacing tips

Customizing the interface Make the special pieces component:

[Set up a measuring device] Open the Generate Glyphs dialog box Using Components A slight digression about paths. Weight balls

Drawing the caps, lowercase, and accents

The slanted sides

The miniscules or lowercase Accents, diacritics, and composites Finish the letterspacing Building your font family

This is the place to add the rest of the family variants

Add the accented composite characters Finish off all the miscellaneous characters and glyphs

Special composited characters Currency glyphs & other specialties What is an OpenType feature? As you get started Finishing the glyph designs # Description Caps SmCaps 1= Sidebearing of H 90 (0) 120 2= Three Quarter of H 75 105 3= Half sidebearing of H 45 75 4= Sidebearing of O 30 60 5= Minimum sidebearing 20 45 Ligatures Swashes et al

Kern and generate the font

So, how the heck do I know what to kern & by how much? Spacing is a major part of your design

Building a book font family

Letterspacing History Break: Minister What is a book font family?

Building the bold weight

Why not use the Bold effect? The lowercase glyphs

Blending Medium & Bold between Book & Black

Why did I blend at such an early stage?

Building the italics

Getting started Here I make a radical break with the methodology of the earlier editions Building a new feature set for bold italics

Generating the fonts Building the Display version Starting the new sans family

Reworking the glyphs Design for designers Adding the bold version Kerning the fonts

An ebook version

Here’s the procedure for making an ebook version

Thank you for reading my book Typography

Some terminology A Practical Approach To Classifying Fonts A practical list Old Style fonts: readable and beautiful (1500-1750 or so) Venetian: Adobe Jenson Pro Aldine: Bembo Garalde: Garamond 3 French Old Style: ITC Galliard Dutch Old Style: Janson English Old Style: Caslon Transitional: Baskerville Modern: Bodoni Book Slab Serif: Cheltenham Realist: Clarendon

Sans serif classifications

Gothic: Franklin Gothic Geometric Sans: Futura Populist commoner: Helvetica Stylized Sans: Gill Sans Humanist Sans: Optima Mimicking handwriting

Type drawing tools

The Pen Tool How do you draw with paths? A simple drawing exercise Your assignment for now Why do we start with Illustrator?

Tracing drawings & artwork Thank you for reading my book

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