Create Yer Own Fonts-Cheap!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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      • I posted a couple questions elsewhere about creating fonts. At the time, I searched for Windows TTF font creation/editing software and only found a couple that cost $300-400. There is now a cheap one out ($50) that is downloadable for free 30 day trial -a great boon to us document fakers. I just been messing with it today but it allows you to create from scratch or edit an existing font (which is easier, just copy and rename). -I don’t know that it does everything the expensive ones do, but it seems to allow all Unicode characters. Editing an existing font is pretty easy -or rather, it’s easy to mess an existing font up. Making something that looks nice takes some time. But now all I need to do is find the time.
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  • MC
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      • By the by, I didn’t post any names on purpose; there ain’t no commercial advertising allowed here, so I can’t. If you’re interested, look around with search engines. It is out there. - MC
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I thought commercial advertising meant spam. Anyway, I can think of two good font-creation programs, and yeah, at $400 retail each, they’re clearly aimed at professionals. But if you’re patient and willing to shop around, you can find at least one of those programs for a much lower price. I got my copy of Fontographer 4.1 from eBay for $120. I’ve yet to play around with it, but I have already thought of a couple typeface designs I want to make. Should be fun. :slight_smile:

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I must be missing something. I have a font creation program that I paid $9.95 for at Staples in the sale bin that suits me just fine. Font Magician by Expert Software.

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Info on Font Magician here.

Arden, FM looks to me to be a type effects program rather than a font creation program. Does FM use fonts you already have installed on your system? Does it take, say, your basic Comic Sans font, and allow you to add a glow effect or shadow? If so, it’s a type effects program.

Programs like Fontographer generate actual fonts. You can design your own (to make a font of your handwriting, for example) or make a font consisting of design elements of other typefaces. You can also use these programs to add characters to a font character set (they did this a lot when the euro symbol was introduced) or save them so that they work on other platforms.

There are very few font-creation programs out there, but there are a ton of font management, font repair, font effects, and font compilation programs/CDs.

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It does do the effects, AudreyK, but I have also played with the actual creation part of it. I haven’t actually created any new fonts since the major drawback to these $9.95 programs is that they have no how-to book with them and I have little enough free time as it is. If I actually started creating fonts I’d never get anything done

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If FM has some font creation tools, then neat. :slight_smile: That’s a pretty good deal for $10.

I’m curious about the program now. Unfortunately, it appears to be available for Windows only. Phooey.

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      • Well heck. The name is Font Creator, the company is High-Logic. The program is Win only, fully functional for 30 days and $50 after that. -And the company website counter says 259xxx hits, and is copyrighted 1997-2000. So it seems that a few somebodies would know about it, -but when I looked I missed it somehow. - MC
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A company called Data Becker has a program called My Handwriting that creates TT fonts based on scans of your handwriting. It also then lets you modify the font, as well as other existing fonts. (I think you can modify existing fonts, anyway.) It was cheap, around $20. And fun, too. All my menus sport my own handwriting, ensuring that no one else can easily use my computer. Windows only, I believe.

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      • I look at the cheap software occasionally but I don’t buy it any more unless it explicitly says on the package that it does something that I particularly need to do. I have learned that reading the title and assuming things is an easy way to end up with another expensive coaster. Many times you face the situation of finding two or three cheap titles that might do what you want, or there’s one (relatively) expensive one that you know does what you want, because the expensive one has a support area on the company website with updates and a forum where you can ask other owners before you buy.
  • Font Creator does the bitmap-scanning thing too. - MC