Hi all!
I just started designing my own first typeface. It’s a handwritten script. I spent last three days designing it in Glyphs and I’m enjoying it so far!
As a beginner, I spent quite time researching how to start, general rules about typography, character elements, kerning, etc. I think I did it good for the first time, but it would be really useful to me, and hopefully other beginners like me, if you share your workflow, from idea, sketching to the end result.
Here is mine and you correct me if you think I did something wrong, and I guess I did.
- Sketched with the pen and paper
- Captured it with my phone
- Vectorized it in the Illustrator (which I was familiar with before)
- Adjusted curves in Glyphs. Now, this part is a bit tricky and I’d like to hear more. This is what I did:
4.1. Adjusted all thickness properly
4.2. Adjusted character connections
4.3. Unified look and feel as I go - Kerning
- More adjustments
- More kerning
- More adjustment
- More kerning
This is how far I went. I think I’ll spend some more time adjusting and kerning until I’m completely satisfied with the results.
What I plan to do:
- Punctuations, symbols and other characters
- Ligatures (oh boy, I think I’ll gonna enjoy this part)
- Export and install my font, paste A VERY long text and read to find all possible kerning mistakes.
Other questions:
- Does number of kerning combinations significantly increase the file size? Is it a good practice to have many, or should just avoid it and try to make design that requires less kerning.
- Obviously, number of ligatures increases the file size, as a new character is introduced every time, but how significantly? Can I be relaxed and make as many as I please, or should I be more careful?
That’s it for now