I made a font with a distressed effect that is 4.2MB. I did a quick look at fonts with similar effects & glyph count, comparing the file sizes displayed on MyFonts — nobody seems to even break 2MB. A few questions - will 4MB font be a problem for designers? I’m assuming the size is due to the the massive number of nodes (a few thousand per glyph). Could anything else be affecting the size?
The biggest problem is to get a font like this to compile.
Other than that should be only performance problems. But you should test it extensively. Printers might be the biggest problem.
That is an unusually high number of nodes. I am working on something similar, where the font clocks in at 3.2mb. Make sure you do not apply any kind of hinting. The size makes it unusable for the web and the otf/cff will not work very well on Windows, and it will cause slowdowns and stalls, eg during PDF generation. Other than that, you should test the font in InDesign and Illustrator, and warn your users of potential performance problems. Other than that, you should be fine.
I did something like this. The font compiled and everything looked great. Except for in certain sizes in print and on screen where really long ‘spikes’ could be seen. Almost like nodes had jumped around.
Try to reduce as much as possible.
I didn’t think of turning hinting off. I’ll turn it off and see how big it gets.