Font-making software is deceptive. They make it sound so very easy - just drop in some font-ish designs and voila! That's how we created our original "Petalwing" lettering, way way back. When Nate Piekos (Blambot) set about crafting the new Elfquest font, he gave a mini-tutorial in all the arcane magic he had to work, including setting up any number of custom kern pairs - because there's just no way a single kern metric is going to play well with every adjacent letter. More power to you!
I'm building my library of kern pairs now. Making a font is very easy to do wrong and very hard to do right. I think mine fall somewhere in the middle (moderate amount of work, unexceptional quality).
Hey Brian -- so funny you posted this. I was just working on some pages in my book in progress and thinking I would ask your opinion about the lettering. In Tangles I used font I made for $10 on fontifier. But for this book I am determined to at least try hand lettering. Part of the book is journal entries in 1800s pre-Spencerian script. I was thinking I would ask you and a couple other people if it was legible. I'm kind of loving it but no sense torturing readers (I guess). :) so I might send something soon. I love your font btw.
Sarah! I remember us talking about lettering when you were doing Tangles, especially when it came time for the German edition. I'd love to see what you're doing with the journal entries (your research sounds like it's been fascinating) and will happily render any service I can.
Font-making software is deceptive. They make it sound so very easy - just drop in some font-ish designs and voila! That's how we created our original "Petalwing" lettering, way way back. When Nate Piekos (Blambot) set about crafting the new Elfquest font, he gave a mini-tutorial in all the arcane magic he had to work, including setting up any number of custom kern pairs - because there's just no way a single kern metric is going to play well with every adjacent letter. More power to you!
ReplyDeleteI'm building my library of kern pairs now. Making a font is very easy to do wrong and very hard to do right. I think mine fall somewhere in the middle (moderate amount of work, unexceptional quality).
ReplyDeleteHey Brian -- so funny you posted this. I was just working on some pages in my book in progress and thinking I would ask your opinion about the lettering. In Tangles I used font I made for $10 on fontifier. But for this book I am determined to at least try hand lettering. Part of the book is journal entries in 1800s pre-Spencerian script. I was thinking I would ask you and a couple other people if it was legible. I'm kind of loving it but no sense torturing readers (I guess). :) so I might send something soon. I love your font btw.
ReplyDeleteSarah! I remember us talking about lettering when you were doing Tangles, especially when it came time for the German edition. I'd love to see what you're doing with the journal entries (your research sounds like it's been fascinating) and will happily render any service I can.
ReplyDelete