Practical Font Design, Third Edition

Practical Font Design The Revised and Expanded Third Edition BUT Practical Font Design With FontLab 5 is the final edition. A rewritten, expanded 3rd edition including the second edition of part one and part two (on building book font families) plus new materials giving a practical walk through the process of designing a font and families. This is not about artistic considerations, but the practicalities of putting a font together. On the other hand, the design approach is fine art. David's training is as a fine art printmaker: etchings & stone lithography. The basic procedure we use for font design is found in this book. It is a step by step following of new font designs with tips and comments along the way. A book to help graphic designers design fonts Here at the foundry, we use FontLab 5 in the production of our fonts. Over the years we have developed over a hundred fonts. In the process, we have picked up a lot of experience in the process of designing a font efficiently. This is not a book for programmers and scripters. This is a book for graphic designers and typographers who love type and want to make their own fonts-either for themselves or to sell. In the process of writing this book, several things were developed that you might find useful in your design process. In general, these are pieces of copy or FontLab files that will save you the time required to make your own. There are lists of composite glyphs to generate, and OpenType features file, and a text file to use when generating metrics and kerning tables. You can find them on this page. Here's a condensed table of contents for you to see what is in the book Why a 3rd edition?xv Because I've learned so much since I wrote the first twoxv This is a small one-person low budget operationxvi Welcome!To the 3rd edition of practical font design1 Defining typography2 A Practical Approach To Classifying Fonts9 Type drawing tools33 The creation of a font47 A step by step procedure47 A new unilateral serif font49 Begin with a new or base font50 Scan & trace67 Letterspacing109 Some definitions109 The decisions needed for good letter fit110 Basic methodology110 FontLab's Metrics panel111 Typical adjustments to spacing115 Display or Text?118 For Practical Font Design: Part Two I went much more traditional118 Generating fonts for testing123 Making composite glyphs127 Generating the basic characters127 Adding OpenType Features133 What is an OpenType feature?133 Writing an OpenType feature134 How a feature works135 Using classes136 Adding features to our new font138 Ligatures146 Kerning your new font151 The Metrics window151 The need for a kerning text document152 The kerning process154 what to kern & by how much?156 Using real words159 Classes160 Tracing drawings & artwork163 Placing into Illustrator164 Make sure the scan is clean164 Live Trace in Illustrator166 Designing font families171 Let's start traditional171 Book font family characteristics175 Text versus display175 The need for text and display versions180 The need for a sans version180 Kerning & Assembling the family237 Generating the fonts241

About the Author :
It started in the late 1960s when I was hand lettering psychedelic posters for my acid-rock group on the West Bank of Minneapolis. I started getting my fine art degree in printmaking in the Fall of 1969 after flailing about for a few years as a flower child (those people who were later called hippies). When I graduated with my BFA degree in Printmaking & Drawing, I almost immediately became involved with publishing. In the late 1970s, when I was hired (in west Virginia) as a graphic artist under Pik, an art director from the last class at the University of Michigan to still be required to learn hand lettering. Many of the projects I did for him required hand-lettered headlines. If they weren't hand lettered, they were heavily modified photostats begun as presstype. During the 1980s, my main skill was modified type built off presstype from Letraset. They were the only company selling designs that impressed me. In starting the research for my new booklet series on Type Design I have discovered that a major influence on my design taste is Colin Brignall, who was the Type Director of Letraset-the major supplier of presstype and new font designs in the 1980s. I started putting in alphabets from fonts I love and the first three I thought of were designed by Colin. What really opened things up for me was FreeHand during the 1990s. Being able to tear type apart and play with the paths became my main source of creative fun. The direct control of paths that FreeHand had was amazing. The thing that finally moved me over the edge was the inclusion of Fontographer with the Graphic Studio Suite and FreeHand 7. I was forced into FontLab in the early years of the new millennium. At first I hated it. But I have come to rely on its path editing tools. They are far superior to FreeHand which in turn was far better than Illustrator What led you to pursue designing fonts? It was fun-simply entertainment. I was driven by the need for fonts that had characteristics that were not being sold for text fonts. Caslon had the expert sets and that was it. For example, I wanted true small caps and oldstyle figures in all my fonts and that was not possible or readily available in text fonts limited to 256 characters. I needed display fonts that had caps, lowercase, and small caps. I wanted ligatures. I needed the open ballot box. So I added them to all my fonts. I often had to make several version of each style to simply hold the various characters I used all the time in my designs.