Vertical Metrics/Leading

Amateur typographer here trying to teach myself about type design.

I’m experimenting with a pre-exisiting typeface by typing out its letterforms in Illustrator, converting them to outlines, and bringing them over to Glyphs. From there, I’ve learned about spacing and kerning, but I cannot for the life of me figure out leading.

I’m currently dealing with capital letters A-Z, 0-9 and some punctuation (:.,’) to get a feel for it. I’ve organized my vertical metrics (Ascender, X-Height, Cap Height are all the same) so that the leading appears to be tight when I preview it. However, when I export, the leading is very loose. Any way to remedy this?

Please note that I’m just doing this for educational purposes! I figure I should learn how to execute a pre-existing typeface before conquering the nuances of my own. Thank you very much!

Does this help?
http://glyphsapp.com/blog/vertical-metrics/

Hi Mekkablue, thank you for responding! I did look over that post, but its just a little bit over my head. I don’t know where those values are on Glyphs, and I’ve tried searching for them. Would you mind direction me? Thank you for your help!

If anyone can else could shed some light on this, that’d be wonderful.

It’s implemented as a custom parameter in Font Info:
http://glyphsapp.com/blog/custom-parameters/

If you don’t wanna go into too much techy detail, try experimenting with your Ascender and Descender values in File > Font Info > Masters > Metrics.

Hey Mekkablue! Thank you again for responding. I’ve played around with my values and they look completely fine when I’m in Glyphs. Exactly how I want them. However, when I export them, the leading doesn’t hold. Am I looking over something on the exportation side of things?

Where do you test the leading? Different apps interpret the values differently. The first link I posted has more detail about this.

Hi. I’m in quite the same situation. Changing the values in Font info does not seem to have any effect. I’m using my font in Illustrator, and I see all other changes I have made. Tried the custom parameters, same nothing.

Not only the leading is very loose, which is not such a problem per se, when selected each text line also includes huge empty area below the baseline (twice as big as the leading), which is kinda inconvenient.

Can you post your values for the ascender, descender and units per em?
And are there any custom parameters (leftovers from importing)?

@ellipse:
Adobe Illustrator is a different story all together, it calculates its own metrics, but you can adjust it.
We already discussed it in the forum once (scroll down all the way).