Hi there,
I’m creating a font with Glyphs Mini. When I export the .otf file and try it in Illustrator (saving the file in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/) the font is too small. I tried to transform all the glyphs with the scale tool, then I changed the metrics and the UPM according to the new height of the font, but nothing changes.
Is there something else I can do?
A quick and easy method to increase the scaling of a font in applications is to reduce the font’s UPM value while touching nothing else in the font. So, for example, if you have a font with a typical CFF UPM value of 1000, you can make the font scale 10% larger by changing the UPM to 909.
WARNING: some software makers, despite the clear contrary statement of the OT spec, assume that any CFF font will have a 1000 UPM (this was the standard of the old PostScript Type 1 fonts). Notably, I have seen third-party PDF creators that messed up scaling of embedded fonts due to this assumption.
Did you have a look this tutorial. Some things only apply to the full version but the general ideas still apply. https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/vertical-metrics
Well, there you go, changing the UPM (units per em) to adapt to the new unit sizes, probably scaled the font down to the original size.
A letter that is 800 units high in a font with UPM 1600 will appear to be the same size as a letter 500 units high in a 1000 UPM font.
Thank you all for replying.
If I change the UPM value and I leave the metrics unchanged, this happens: image.
In this way the auto-leading of the font doesn’t change correctly when I change the font size.
The image does not load for me.
Auto-leading: in which app?
Do you mean the size of the text box? (Which is not the leading.)
No, I mean the line spacing
In Illustrator, the distance between two baselines is not controlled by the font but by the user, in the Character panel (cmd-T).
Yes, I know that, this is what I’m talking about, the default auto-leading.
Here’s a video of what happens in AI when I change only the UPM.
The first placeholder has a default auto-leading; when I change the UPM from 700 to 400 the font size gets bigger, but the leading doesn’t change (like it happens in all the default fonts).
Also, when I select the font, the first time the selections cover all the font’s height, the second time (when the UPM is lower), it selects only a part of it.
The automatic value that AI employs is 120% of the font size (=120% of UPM). The 120% is not stored anywhere in the font though, it is hardcoded in AI, but you can scale your letters accordingly. My guess is that you scaled way too much. A good point of orientation is to take your actual cap height in units, multiplied by 1.5. In that general ballpark, you will usually find a good value for your UPM.
How AI calculates the bounds of the selection rectangle, I do not know.
Hi everyone,
I’ve read what you were writing above about this topic but I couldn’t solve my problem like that.
My font looks too small and I just couldn’t I import it bigger into Glyphs from Illustrator because it had to fit 1000x1000 px square. I have bigger capital letters since it’s a script but eventually all my letters look small.
Here is the preview from my Creative Market shop.
Can anyone help please?
Thank you so much,
Ana
Quick fix for making things appear larger is to reduce the UPM value in File > Font Info > Font.
Though I don’t see in which way it is too small. It is normal that x-heights of script fonts are smaller than those of text fonts because usually you have to fit much larger ascenders and descenders into the same height.
