I am conlanging and have some very specific font ideas. But no real familiarity with the technical language nor success in using a font making program to do what I want. I have created a script/alphabet to go with the language on which I am working. For it to appear correctly I need different letters to nest against one another differently. I believe this is called kerning, but I cannot guarantee that is the correct application. I am very used to working with things as pixels rather than as vectors, though I believe vector images work better for this kind of thing. The images I am currently using are 56 to 186 pixels wide and 512 pixels tall. They have some artifacting which has added to their aesthetics, and I have made no attempt to remove it.
I would like to be able to drag and drop the images I have created directly into the slots I want them to be in, and then edit them from there. Can I do this?
Different letters need to sit next to one another differently based on shape. Can this happen, and will it be a difficult or simple process?
I am uploading an example I created in an art program where I placed each letter by hand so you can see how it fits together. This is the alphabet I have designed for my conlang of Mòlkhbhegh. Each letter within a word is spaced 5 pixels from any letter next to it in that word. A standard spacing was used between words. There are no punctuation marks as punctuation and grammar are indicated with in the spoken language.
Glyphs is a vector based app – as fonts are mostly vector based. There are some options to use images. This is manly intended for color/emoji fonts.
Your shapes can’t be easily represented as vectors as there are grays and transparency. It depends a bit what you want if it would be better to convert to (cleaned up) vectors or keep it as images.
How to get your images into a font is explained here: https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/creating-an-apple-color-font
And also read: https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/spacing https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/kerning
Thank you. If I understand correctly, a vectored version of the image would create bands of gradation where the colors exist. Would that not be the case? Cleaning up around the character would not bother me. They could be converted to strictly black and white, but that would lose an unintended event that does actually fit with the character of the language.
The language is meant to be something dark, mysterious, twisted, and corrupted. It is a the language of fiends and things that go bump in the void. All the elements of each letter were randomly placed using die rolls. (Each element having been given 8 possible presentations based on the 8 rayed arrow of chaos.) Each element is a corruption of an element found in cuneiform. As I said, the color is not mandatory, but it fits the ambiance of those that would use it.
If you’re not sure what can achieved texture-wise in fonts, have a look through this catalog of experimentation: Fancy > Eroded fonts | dafont.com . Not to say that you should, just that you could…
No, vector would be all black (like most normal fonts). (@Dezcom download the image and zoom in. It has subtle colors in at the edges).
Depending on how do you like to use the font, the colors will not be visible in most “normal” sizes. And the file size will be much bigger with the images. And the vector version might render better in some/most sizes.
