Hand-Lettered Font Creation For Comics/PictureBooks/etc.

QuietYell · 15 Sept 2016, 16:26

@Jake-Parker You mentioned about having made your own hand-lettered font in the “Drawing Comics” course.

Can you (and anyone else here) share any tips, do’s & don’ts, breakdown of the hand-written, font-making process (including preferred software and whether you think it is better to start by writing on paper or just jump right into writing in the computer with a stylus, particularly for fonts to be used in text blocks).

To be clear, I am referring to handwriting-based lettering as opposed to graphical, vector designed text. Also, my interest is primarily for text blocks in books/comics as opposed to headline or logo text.

evilrobot · 15 Sept 2016, 16:54

This is how I turned my handwriting into a font and it was super fast, easy, and free tutorial here not sure if this website is still up though because I couldn't get through to it?

QuietYell · 15 Sept 2016, 16:59

@evilrobot ooh thanks! Can't wait to check it out!

Did you have any particular insights regarding letter construction & letter interaction (e.g. for issues with kerning/tracking, line-height/leading, etc.)

evilrobot · 15 Sept 2016, 17:05

Um...I'm not really that much of font guy. I just filled in the little boxes downloaded the tiff file it spit out and everything just seemed to work when I loaded it in. LOL...sorry can't be more help as far as the other stuff goes. Maybe one of the other people on here with more graphic design background can help with that stuff.

QuietYell · 15 Sept 2016, 17:07

@evilrobot heh - No problem! Actually, it’s ironic that having been primarily designing for nearly 2 decades, I have never made a font other than specific letters/text for headlines & logos. I guess there are just so many great ones already out there! However, I do think it would be valuable to create sets of hand-lettered fonts that fit my illustration styles.

evilrobot · 15 Sept 2016, 17:18

The job I hated the most was working at the newspaper doing ads for the classifieds. I thought I was at least going to be able to do something that was a little creative....but it turned out everyone just wanted their ad to be a dead center picture with (the font I hate the most) IMPACT font. I only lasted about 3 months.

QuietYell · 15 Sept 2016, 17:20

@evilrobot hah! That would be 3 months longer than me! You have endurance!!!