{"id":30315,"date":"2011-11-22T02:31:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T10:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/?p=30315"},"modified":"2011-11-22T02:35:32","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T10:35:32","slug":"designing-fonts-shaping-kerning-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/archives\/30315","title":{"rendered":"Designing fonts: Shaping, kerning, tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/shape.method.ac\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/B\/ShapeType.png\" width=\"425\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been drawing some form of type since the 1980s. And have been teaching type for several years now.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to &#8216;go digital&#8217; when introducing typography, since letterform history goes back hundreds (and thousands) of years.<\/p>\n<p>So I still use 15th century era handtools in my <a href=\"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/archives\/323\">introductory type courses.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Good fonts still contain elements from long ago \u2013 and today, all we really do is recreate what was once done with broad pens \u2013 using digital tools.<\/p>\n<p><strong>font games!<\/strong><br \/>\nTo get a taste of how &#8216;us professionals&#8217; render type these days, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/duopixel.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mark MacKay&#8217;s<\/a> brilliant <a href=\"http:\/\/shape.method.ac\/\" target=\"_blank\">Shape Type<\/a> (pictured above) and <a href=\"http:\/\/type.method.ac\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kern Type.<\/a> Both are nutshell adaptations of today&#8217;s process \u2013\u00a0kerning being a majorly overlooked, but necessary typesetting skill.<\/p>\n<p><strong>digital type tools<\/strong><br \/>\nFonts today are vector-based, so a mastering the basics of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/illustrator.html\" target=\"_blank\">Adobe Illustrator<\/a> is the start.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond this, there are a bunch of applications on the market for drawing fonts. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fontlab.com\/font-editor\/fontlab-studio\/\" target=\"_blank\">FontLab<\/a> is the big one, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fontlab.com\/font-editor\/fontographer\/\" target=\"_blank\">Fontographer<\/a> is the old one with the easy interface \u2013\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fontlab.com\/font-editor\/typetool\/\" target=\"_blank\">TypeTool<\/a> is a barebones student-discounted alternative. Unlike Illustrator, these font tools take into account how letters are drawn, with built ins that make it easy to adjust edges. Karen Cheng&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0300111509?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=stevemehallo-20&#038;linkCode=shr&#038;camp=213733&#038;creative=393185&#038;creativeASIN=0300111509&#038;ref_=sr_1_1&#038;qid=1321957384&#038;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Designing Type<\/a><\/em> is also a must resource to have.<\/p>\n<p>And I do all my logo drawings directly in FontLab \u2013 after multiple sketches in pen and ink. It&#8217;s just easier that way.<\/p>\n<p><em>Shape Type found via Mark Nutini<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\t<div style=\"float: left; \">\r\n\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-count=\"horizontal\" data-text=\"Designing fonts: Shaping, kerning, tools\" data-url=\"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/archives\/30315\"  data-via=\"mehallo\">Tweet<\/a>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\"><\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been drawing some form of type since the 1980s. And have been teaching type for several years now. It&#8217;s hard to &#8216;go digital&#8217; when introducing typography, since letterform history goes back hundreds (and thousands) of years. So I still use 15th century era handtools in my introductory type courses. Good fonts still contain elements [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,49,127,53,120],"tags":[121,126,67,58,122],"class_list":["post-30315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-education","category-fonts","category-thoughts","category-typography","tag-design","tag-education","tag-fonts","tag-graphic-design","tag-typography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30315"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30327,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30315\/revisions\/30327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}