Chinese Font

I’m totally new to the idea of creating my own font, and though it sounds simple enough, it sounds like to create a chinese font, it’s a whole lot complicated. Is there anyone who can provide me with some insight as to how it is done?

I understand it has something to do with unicode? It’s just that, i can’t seem to find a chinese font that is made up of ‘dots’ like how you would find an english font that is like that, so that kids in school can learn how to write mandarin or, english.

I went to Fontstruct and they had a BoPoMoFo template (which is the chinese pronunciation) and i did the letters based on the template that was provided, but somehow i wasn’t able to import that to Glyphs, and that font didn’t seem to appear at all. Is there a fixed template of all the chinese letters so that i can create my own dotted font for the kids in my school?

Would appreciate any help at all. Thanks!

To start with font design with a Chinese font is quite a big step.

How did you import the font from fontstruct? Can you send me the file?

Hi Georg,
I managed to make a font based on the BoPoMoFo template, but am now realising there are so much more letters involved. I wasn’t able to import the file at first into Gylphs, but just managed to. Where should i send the file to?

Also, is there a template, of all the letters in chinese that i can work on? I’m sure since others have made chinese fonts before, they should have started with something?

Bopomofo is a phonetic system invented to teach pronunciation of Chinese letters. It is now used in Taiwan, but it’s abandoned in other places in favour of Pinyin. I don’t know what you want to do with Bopomofo, but I wouldn’t recommend choosing Chinese (Simplified or Traditional) as your first-ever font project. You can make a Bopomofo or Pinyin relatively easily though.

Hi Tosche,
Thanks for enlightening me. I guess i had misunderstood the BoPoMoFo template, as the chinese characters for making a simplified font.

I know it is hard to make, but is there a site i could learn about how to start making it?

Not in English as far as I know. I’ve never searched for Chinese website nor can I, as I’m not fluent.

But try this:
Make a new font file, select Font > Add Glyphs, then paste the characters you want to draw, one glyph per line. So you should paste like below.







Then you can draw letters in each empty glyph.

Maybe this site can help you : How to make (Chinese) Font

It is in Chinese and with video in mandarin