Creating fonts
If you would like to turn your constructed alphabets into fonts, there are a number of ways to do so: you could buy one of the professional font creation tools available from Fontlab, you could use a free font editor such as FontForge or Softy, or use the font creation service Fontifier.
Today I found out about another font tool, FontStruct, a free online font editor which looks good and fairly easy to use. The site also has a gallery where you view fonts created by other people and add your own creations. When I can find a spare moment or two, I’ll have a go at converting some of my ideas for con-scripts into fonts.
3 Responses to “Creating fonts”
d.m.falk on 10 May 2008 at 1:03 am #
Although I’m no longer using Windows (the above-mentioned FontForge is the only real inexpensive- free, actually- alternative for the Mac, which I’m on now), there is also another inexpensive font editor for Windows you didn’t mention, and one I strongly supported when I was using Windows: FontCreator, which can be found at http://www.high-logic.com/ - It is REALLY good, and alot easier than some of the more commercial editors while being able to deliver quality font creations. :)
d.m.f.
jdotjdot89 on 12 May 2008 at 2:20 am #
I also am a very big fan of High-Logic’s font creation program. I’ve been using it for three or four years now, and not only is it easy to use, it creates high-quality fonts. I’ve used it for everything from creating new fonts from scratch to editing other fonts.
I highly recommend it for creating fonts for any language, whether conlangs or new scripts for already-existing languages. It is possible, with that program, to assign each “picture” to any character on the entire unicode map, as well as set kerning, etc.
rek on 13 May 2008 at 5:09 pm #
I think maybe there should be a contest here, to see who can turn their pencilled conscript into a good looking typeface with FontStruct. Typophile.com had a similar contest a few weeks ago (just to render a single word though). Anyone can draw out characters, but do they work in real world applications like on computers? That’s the test of how viable a conscript is, I think.