For users who want to create basic fonts, or who want to easily convert between font types, Font Type Master is a solid contender. It differs from other font editor software in that it offers fewer tools, but the ones it offers are useful. Beginners may want to think twice before purchasing this software, as the support options are limited, but intermediate and advanced users should have no problem.

There is a user manual that is divided into 21 brief articles, but we found typos in it, which brings into question the credibility of the document as a whole. Our email to the technical support staff went unanswered, but our email to the sales staff got a prompt response. There is no other method available to contact the developer, nor are there any tutorials or user forums. The FAQs section is incredibly brief.

Fortunately, this font editor is moderately easy to use, with the biggest drawback being that when you hover your mouse over icons, the name of the tool does not appear. This was certainly disappointing, as we had trouble figuring out what some of the tools were supposed to do.

The interface is great, however, and it has a unique design. Anything you open within a font – metrics, glyphs map, glyphs editors – remains open in tabs across the top of the work area until you close it. And you can display multiple tabs by dragging them to a new view area. This lets you work on multiple glyphs at once, which is quite the handy feature.

This font editor also makes it very easy to work on multiple fonts at once, thanks to a menu on the left that displays which fonts you have opened. This is far better than the fonts-viewed-in-windows format that most other font creators use, as it reduces clutter and is generally more aesthetically pleasing.

In fact, the whole design of the software has great aesthetics. Screens and windows are simple and attractive, and the glyph editor takes up most of the workspace, which provides better visibility and more control over your edits.

If you decide you don’t like the changes you’ve made to a glyph, you can just right-click and choose “reset glyph” from the menu, and all your changes will be removed. While useful and certainly unique among font creators, this function isn’t exactly vital to making your own font.

The metrics view is rather confusing, as it is represented entirely in technical format, with only numbers and descriptions displayed. It is detailed, which is good, but we much prefer the user-friendliness of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor.

Basic drawing tools are just that – incredibly basic. They’re limited to just adding points or curves, or erasing them. Batch transformations are limited to outline functions; that is, you can normalize or reverse outlines on multiple glyphs, but that’s it. Composite glyphs can be created with the copy-and-paste functions. Font Type Master does not support hinting or kerning adjustments.

The magic wand tool is a rather complicated selection tool, so we prefer to just use the cursor as normal. You can scale, skew and rotate glyphs, but accessing the various transformation formats can be a bit of a pain, as you have to go through the Glyph Editor menu. For letters that are “hollow” in the middle, like p, o, d, and the like, you have to make sure you select both sets of curves or outlines before you apply transformations.

This font generator is capable of opening fonts from PDF files, but the manual’s disclaimer notes that there are limitations on this function. The software only opens font files; no vector or bitmap files are supported. The test font feature is limited to multiple master fonts only.

You can open any type of font file except for bitmap fonts, and you can save fonts in any format that the software can open. This means that converting from one outline font to another is incredibly easy. And you can manually edit family and style names and make individual edits to glyphs, but whole font edits are limited to the contour changes mentioned earlier.