Home > Workshops > Free Fonts

Dave Crossland, who is a consultant for Google Web Fonts, came in to talk about free fonts and how to make them in Font Forge.

His four key points for designing fonts are:
- Contrast
- Alignment
- Proportion
- Repetition

Start with basic letter forms.

Making sure that the thicks and thins are in proportion, get the form and alignment of letters by block colouring with a soft pencil, and then outline.

Repeat process getting darker with shading to get a more concise shape.

Once the shape and proportion of the letters have been determined, it’s time to make a word. Once again going through all those steps but this time on top of each other and not on separate pages.

Contact Information:
ilona.porter@my.westminter.ac.uk

Recreating the letter shape on Font Forge using the Bezier Curve tool.

Making sure the direction of the paths is correct to get the negative and positive space fills.

Using the metrics window to adjust the kern pair.

Using Font Forge

Checking that the letter does not self-intersect.