How to Create a Well-Designed Font with Font Editor Software

If you’ve ever spent hours scouring the internet for a particular style of font, you know how frustrating it is to sift through all those choices. There are literally hundreds of thousands – maybe even millions – of fonts out there for you to purchase or download for free, and trying to find the perfect one can certainly be overwhelming.

Fortunately, with some good font editor software, it’s easy to custom-create a font of your own design. If you haven’t created fonts before, or if you're not yet accustomed to the workflow of newer font editor software applications, you may feel a little bit lost at first. Fortunately, the process behind creating a font from scratch is relatively simple, once you become accustomed with how your chosen software works.

• First, assess your needs and choose a font editor that meets them. Check out our review of the best font editor software if you’re not sure what to look for or what options are available. Read through the manual or quick-start guide so you have an idea of your particular software’s workflow.
• Next, draw your font. Make sure to include all 26 letters in uppercase and lowercase, the digits 0-9, common punctuation symbols like a period, comma, question mark, etc., and any other symbols you think will be important. Don’t forget accented letters like é (though with many font editors, you can just draw the accent marks and later combine them with letters as necessary). There are two main methods for drawing your fonts:
  • These days, many typographers are drawing their font glyphs, or characters, directly in illustrator software like Adobe Illustrator. That’s fine if you’re comfortable with the application and if you have a tablet to make drawing on the computer easier. Just save your files as EPS vector files.
  • If you prefer to draw your font by hand, that’s no problem. Just use a dark, felt-tip marker on plain white paper for best results. Draw your font, then scan it as a grayscale image at 300 dpi. The scanned image will be a bitmap; you may want to convert it to a vector EPS file, but many font editors will allow you to import the bitmap images and create a font without the extra conversion step.
• Now you need to import your images into your font editor. Again, this process will vary depending on the software you’re using and whether you’re importing vector or bitmap images (the software will convert bitmap images to vector outlines). Check the manual for complete instructions.
• Once all your glyphs are in the font editor, go through and make tweaks to each glyph to make sure they appear just as you want them. Erase any stray lines and adjust the width, height and baselines.
• Next, set your font metrics, which determines spacing and placement for glyphs when they’re typed next to one another. Many font editors have an auto-metrics tool that will do this for you, but you may want to set parameters yourself for a truly custom effect.
• Adjust kerning for common pairs of letters, like T and o, Y and e, A and V, etc. Don’t forget that punctuation symbols and numerals often need kerning adjustments as well. Some font editors have an auto-kerning feature that adjusts common letter pairs for you, but again, you may want to do this yourself. To test kerning, you can use the handy Kern King text.
• Add bold, italic and bold-italic versions of your font. Check your software manual for specific details. Don’t forget to set parameters for underlining your font.
• Adjust any OpenType features that you may wish to add, like small caps or right-to-left text flow. Consult your manual for specific OpenType offerings in your software.
• Double-check all your settings, make sure your font info (name, copyright, author, etc.) is included, and export your font! You can use the Bitmap font format, though that is becoming a bit outdated. For best results, we recommend saving it as a Type 1, TrueType, PostScript or OpenType style font.

First-time font creators should be prepared to dedicate some time to learning their software and creating their first font. But with a bit of practice and know-how, you’ll be designing fonts with relative ease.

The best thing about creating your own font is the complete creative control you have over it. Because you created it, you own all the copyrights on it, so you can change it again and again. Conversely, with a purchased or downloaded font, you may not have free reign over customizations and tweaks, as the author might have the font copyrighted.

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