Creating different styles

I just purchased the full version of Glyphs and am preparing to create 2-3 differently textured styles of the original font I’ve almost completed using actions in Illustrator. My question is: should I simply copy the original (regular) font file 2-3 times and copy/paste the new styles into those or is there a better way to do this with Masters? I don’t think I’ll be interpolated anything with different weights like I’ve read about, just creating different graphic styles that the user would see as “roughened_1, roughened_2, etc”.

You do this with additional instances in File > Font Info > Instances and add custom parameters there. There is a tutorial about custom parameters.

This works for hand-drawn fonts that I’m importing from Illustrator? I’m a bit confused because I’m not going to creating different styles using parameters and stem width (my characters have no stem width), just pasting in new characters. I created a new instance and called it “Rough_1” but I’m not sure how to then replace the “regular” glyphs with the “roughened” ones and have these treated as 2 styles from the same family. I thought the “is active” checkbox might play a part but it doesn’t seem to.

You need a stem width for a font, because you need closed paths. Please read the monoline tutorial for more info.

Thanks mekkablue, but I’m not sure how the monoline tutorial applies to this. My font is a hand-drawn script font and doesn’t have one vertical or horizontal stem width (perhaps I’m not fully understanding what stem width is?). I’ve attached screenshots of the “regular” style in Glyphs and some samples of different styles I’m going to create by typing in Illustrator, using AI graphic styles and pasting back into Glyphs. In the past I’ve just copied the original file and named them different styles. I’m not sure how Instances and parameters play into this…

You can add a master for each stile. That way you can sync the metrics and OpenType features between styles. Give each master a different number in the “Weight” field and add an instance for each master with the same number.

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