Font Forge

The above two screen shots show the process of making the letter 'n' in font forge and gives a preview of its final outcome, personally I was not too happy with the end form as it looked too simplictic and rather generic and I feel I could have added a slight change to its shape

Although not a perfect circle the letter 'o' was created and although its in its simplest form I think that because it is slightly disfirgured it gives a different feeling to the character and makes it a bit different

This screen shot shows the letters created in font forge and by double clicking we are able to edit and change the shape of individual characters

Font forge is a open source font editor which allows you to edit existing fonts but also allows for you to start creating your own.

During this workshop we were given a lecture by Dave Crossland and we were given an insight into his history with typography and also taught us on how to use font forge but before getting into the complicated software he told us to draw the letters 'n' 'o' 'a' which is shown on the image to the right. After doing so he gave us a better understanding of what factors need to be considered when drawing a typeface be it a new one or trying to copy an existing one.

1. Contour
2. Repetition
3. Alignment
4. Proposition

Knowing this we were then told to draw the same letters but take those 4 factors and apply them.

Here is an example of Dave himself using fontforge and showing how simple it really is to start making your own typefaces

The first set of letters we did is the one to the bottom of the image, it was rather roughly drawn and not much thought was put into proportions spacing weight and other characteristics of a typeface. After Dave told us about what to consider when drawing a typeface we then did the same type but with better understanding of how as seen in the top section of the image. This time instead of drawing out the outlines i started to shade in the shape of the letter instead and then create the outline to make it a lot more crisp and sharp. Also the spacing between the letters and proportions of each letter were taken more into consideration to achieve a better set.