Practical Font Design has built a niche for itself among graphic and Web designers who want to build their own fonts: especially with the first book. I learned a lot since I wrote that first book. This radically revised, updated, and expanded third edition combines the first two books. They are rearranged so they make a lot more sense and some brand new material is added. This is a quick introduction showing a workflow to build new fonts using FontLab 5. Fourteen fonts are developed in this book including an 8-font text family and a companion 4-font sans serif for headers. The techniques are simple and easy to understand. The results are completely under your control.

This is the Fontographer version of Practical Font Design. In it I guide you through the process of designing several fonts while discussing the options and decisions you need to make as you do so. It is an effort to let you inside the head of an experienced font designer. The goal is to get you up and running with your own designs as quick as possible with a good solid conceptual understanding of the entire process of font design. Why do you want to use Fontographer? For the fun of it! When I received the opportunity to go back to my roots, and see what the new Fontographer was like, I was a little concerned. I had just spent nine years painfully teaching myself to letterspace by hand, to write OpenType features, and to become accustomed to the tool set of FontLab. Don't get me wrong, FontLab is a great program and I am grateful for what I have learned. There are still a few features of FontLab that, as a professional font designer, I cannot do without. But I was taken by surprise. Fontographer brought the fun back! It is still the same marvelous program with which I first learned to design fonts. The drawing interface is still clean, clear, and elegant. I still works the way I have learned to work over the past two decades of digital graphic design. I found pure joy in drawing again. Fontographer is a wonderful drawing experience. It has been a real joy to experience that fun again. After nearly a decade in FontLab, font design is fun again. To quote from the book: "Fontographer is an application which appeals to experienced graphics designers with a background in PostScript illustration-especially those with FreeHand experience from version 7 and earlier. The majority of designers working in the mid-1990s had a copy of Fontographer. It came free with the FreeHand Graphics Studio first released in 1995-and everyone probably used it [at least a little]. Fontographer had [and still has] a unique and intuitive set of drawing tools that enable amateurs of that era to enter the world of font design. I'm talking amateurs in the sense that John Baskerville considered himself an amateur-as I also consider myself, though I am certainly not in Baskerville's league. For me, font design is a beloved sideline with which I indulge myself. It's become a treasured tool I use in my current trade-book writing, designing, and production." Please help me by emailing me with your comments & typos

"Fontographer is an application which appeals to experienced graphic designers with a background in PostScript illustration"-Page 1.

Why do you want to use Fontographer?For the fun of it!When I received the opportunity to go back to my roots, and see what the new Fontographer was like, I was a little concerned. I had just spent nine years painfully teaching myself to letterspace by hand, to write OpenType features, and to become accustomed to the tool set of FontLab. Don't get me wrong, FontLab is a great program. There are still a few features of FontLab that, as a professional font designer, I cannot do without. But I was taken by surprise.Fontographer brought the fun back!It is still the same marvelous program with which I first learned to design fonts. The drawing interface is still clean, clear, and elegant. It still works the way I have learned to work over the past two decades of digital graphic design. I found pleasure in drawing again. Fontographer is a wonderful drawing experience. It has been a real joy to experience that again. After nearly a decade in FontLab, font design is fun again.

This book uses Fontlab 5 to design a new OpenType font of 600+ characters, step by step. The focus is on practical design tips and techniques for those of us who do not like nor want to do coding. The author has been designing fonts since 1994 and has over 100 fonts on the market at Myfonts.com and the Monotype family of sites under the Hackberry Font Foundry banner.

The now-classic introduction to designing typography, handsomely redesigned and updated for the digital age In this invaluable book, Karen Cheng explains the processes behind creating and designing type, one of the most important tools of graphic design. She addresses issues of structure, optical compensation, and legibility, with special emphasis given to the often-overlooked relationships between letters and shapes in font design. In this second edition, students and professional graphic designers alike will benefit from an expanded discussion of the creative practice of designing type—what designers need to consider, their rationale, and issues of accessibility—in the context of contemporary processes for the digital age. Illustrated with more than 400 diagrams that demonstrate visual principles and letter construction, ranging from informal progress sketches to final type designs and diagrams, this essential guide analyzes a wide range of classic and modern typefaces, including those from many premier type foundries. Cheng’s text covers the history of type, the primary systems of typeface classification, the parts of a letter, and the effects of new technology on design methodology, among many other key topics.