Make Your Own Font: A Step-by-Step Guide

Featuring Creative Designers at Work Set by Good Studio

Creative Market Last updated: March 27, 2023 · 9 min read

Of all the design disciplines, few have the elaborate history of typeface design. In fact, the terminology and techniques used in software today stem from processes that were refined over hundreds of years of practice.

These days, typeface design is a highly specialized field that impacts everything from corporate identity to your favorite movie’s ending credits. Every letter you see, whether it’s on the web or in print, was carefully crafted by a typeface designer.

But while typography is everywhere, the process of designing a typeface is far from simple. In this tutorial, we’ll give you a step-by-step guide to font creation.

Understanding the Fundamentals

At the highest level, typefaces are divided into a few different categories, with serif and sans serif being the most prominent. Serif typefaces are those with small lines or embellishments adorning each letter, while sans serif typefaces are clean and elegant. Beyond this categorical split, there are countless subcategories of typefaces, such as slab serif, script, display, and monospace, to name a few.

Despite aesthetic differences across typeface categories, in practice, the same design concepts apply to all fonts. Understanding these concepts is crucial to designing beautiful and consistent typefaces.

Here are the most important terms and concepts you’ll need starting out:

Glyphs: Each character in a typeface or font is called a glyph, including individual letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
Baseline: Like lines on a sheet of ruled paper, the baseline is where all glyphs align at the bottom.
Cap Height: Conversely, cap height describes the height of most capital letters.
X-height: Dropping from the cap height, the x-height is the height of lowercase letters without “ascenders,” typically measured with the “x” glyph.
Ascender Height: Moving back up a little, ascender height describes the height of lowercase letters that extend past the x-height, such as the “l” and “k” glyphs.
Descender Height: Descender height describes the line for glyphs that descend below the baseline, like the “g” and “j” glyphs.
Stem: The stem is the vertical stroke of most glyphs.

Keep in mind these are only the essentials. If you’re new to these terms, it might all seem a little overwhelming. The best way to learn is to dive in and start creating, but you’ll need a typeface design tool first.

The Best Tools for Font Creation

When it comes to digital design, the right software makes all the difference. You’ll need to consider several factors when choosing a font design tool, including the kinds of fonts you want to make, your budget, and your experience level. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of options available on every front.

FontLab

Made for Mac and Windows, FontLab is one of the most popular font creation tools available, and it works for simple type designs or complex typeface projects. It works with OpenType, TrueType, variable, and web fonts. It also works for any language, from Latin to Mandarin.

Glyphs

Made specifically for macOS, Glyphs is a sophisticated typeface design tool that enables you to create and fine-tune the largest typeface project in every format. You can even open fonts in a font editor and start crafting right away. While it’s immensely powerful software, it’s a bit pricey, although Glyphs Mini offers a trimmed-down version that’s more affordable.

FontForge

For open-source software enthusiasts, FontForge offers many of the capabilities of premium tools, sans price. With a vector glyph editor, font converter, and font validator, it provides all the essentials for typeface design.

Other Tools

While the tools mentioned above are standards in type design, there are several other tools available, many of which are free or open source. Fontself, FontStruct, and Birdfont are a few of those options. If you’re simply exploring the concept of typeface design, start with one of these tools to get a feel for the process.

Make Your Own Font

With the fundamentals firmly in place and a new design tool in your arsenal, it’s time to create your own font. Keep in mind, while the following steps are simple in concept, it takes a significant amount of time to design a great font. A high-quality typeface has well over 1,000 handcrafted glyphs, and that’s not counting glyphs to support other languages.

In other words, the most important part of designing your font comes in defining the reasons why you’re designing it in the first place, which leads us to your design brief.

Step 1: Start With a Design Brief

As with any other design project, a brief is the most significant part of typeface design. It’s essential to refine your ideas from the beginning. Doing so provides you with a guide for undertaking this lengthy process.

Apart from the individual glyphs they’re comprised of, typefaces convey different meanings depending on your design decisions — a great font can set the tone for an entire project, whether it’s a website or a simple document. Take this opportunity to answer questions about your design, such as:

Are you making a font for a specific project or one that’s more generally applicable?
What kinds of sizing do you need for your font?
Do you intend to design a serif, sans serif, or some other kind of typeface?
Are you designing something traditional or more modern?
Are you designing a font based on your handwriting?

It’s also a good idea to collect fonts for inspiration. Perhaps there’s a font you love, but you wish the weights were a little different or the serifs were a bit smaller. Many great typefaces projects began with the dissatisfied eye of a fledgling typographer.

Step 2: Sketch Your Glyphs on Paper

Once you’ve answered your questions and know the direction you’re headed in with your font design, it’s time to start sketching. Jumping directly into your new design tool might be tempting, especially if you’re riding a wave of inspiration. But starting with pencil and paper and defining your style before you begin drawing each glyph can save you a lot of time in a process that’s already lengthy.

Graph or grid paper is the best choice for type design since you’ll want to establish your baseline, cap height, x-height, and so on. Keep in mind, you don’t have to sketch every glyph — you only need “control” characters that establish your typeface’s style.

Each designer is different in the characters they start with, but you can look at the fonts you collected for inspiration to see which glyphs have similar elements. For example, the “F” and “T” glyphs are quite similar in most fonts, so you don’t need both on paper to define your style.

Step 3: Start Designing

With a definitive set of control characters, it’s time to start designing the rest of your typeface. Depending on the tool you chose, you can start with a baseline typeface and work from there, or you can scan your sketches with your iPhone and start from scratch.

Once you’ve translated the control characters from your sketches into digital form, you can use them to form the basis for the rest of your glyphs. Remember, handcrafting a typeface takes time, especially if you’re learning a new tool. Take your time and enjoy the process.

Step 4: Refine Your Typeface

There’s a palpable sense of excitement once you’re nearing the last few glyphs of your first font. Whether you’ve designed dozens or hundreds of glyphs, you’ve achieved something few others do, but you aren’t quite finished yet.

When designing individual geometrical shapes, it’s impossible to get a sense of how they fit together in sentences, paragraphs, or on pages. Once you’ve finished designing your glyphs, you’ll need to export your font and put it to use to check the composition for legibility. And then you’ll need to add a little polish.

For example, you might have to adjust glyph positioning for more kerning consistency or adjust glyph spacing. If you have a printer, seeing your new typeface on physical paper can help you spot inconsistencies.

Once you’ve applied the finishing touches to your new typeface, you’re ready to export your font file and share your new font with the world.

Use a Font Template To Get Started

Designing entire typefaces is no small feat. Seriously dedicated typographers might spend months or more on a single font. Fortunately, if you’re designing a typeface for simpler applications, these easy-to-use templates can jump-start your creative process.

Letter Builder Template

For creatives with tablets and digital drawing tools, this template has everything you need to guide your processes from beginning to end. It has a complete set of template letters in eight weights and a complete grid, so you can dive right into the design process.

Hand-Lettering Toolkit

If you’re looking for an easy start with hand-lettering without all the overhead of crafting a typeface, this kit has all the essentials for drawing gorgeous letter illustrations on your iPad Pro. With three brush sets for a total of 26 brushes and a guide to teach you the author’s hand-lettering process, you can start crafting typographic assets in no time at all.

Procreate Letter Builder Chalk Brush

This lettering kit for Procreate includes a set of 25 chalk brushes, 28 letter brushes, and detailed grids for serifs and sans serifs alike. It’s the perfect starting point for adding a little chalky hand-lettering to your next design project.

Procreate Lettering Grid Builder Set

Budding typographers who insist on pixel perfection will love this grid builder set. It’s perfect for planning your next type project, whether it’s a full typeface or hand-lettering for a poster. The set includes 50 elaborate word grids, six letter grids, composition grids, guide sheets, and letter brushes, so you can plan your project down to the tiniest detail.

The Pursuit of Typographical Excellence

Designing a complete typeface is a lengthy process that requires deep creative and technical expertise. While it’s not for the faint of heart, the process and payoff can be immensely rewarding. Whether you’re dreaming of a traditional serif to write prose with or imagining a sans serif Helvetica replacement, the possibilities are endless.

That said, if you’re more interested in designing a custom font for a logo or as assets for a broader graphic design project, lettering or a grid template is an excellent way to start.