Signs as True Type

My Font

The Makings of A font.

Having spent some time with Luke photographing various shapes that might either provide a letter shape or some element of on, I then started to sketch some of the shapes roughly into my pad. The photographs can be veiwed here; 
http://www.shellintons.com/typo_pics.html

I read through the various links on the Moodle site page that were provided. I have written about those as in the overall module report as I think they are pertinent to the whole module.

I found that I particularly liked the shapes from the Dummy photograph and some of the iron work from the church gates. some of the shapes reminded me of the crop circles I had cause to research and I decided to follow that as a theme for my font.

So I tried a few different ways of mark making but I struggled to get the perfect lines and circles that I felt I needed if I were using my Crop Circle influence. Most of the images I have seen and the one crop circle I have actually been in, most of the lines and cirlces tend to be as perfect as you could make them.

I began by making a document in Photoshop. I made several layers which contained the common elements I would use in the letters. I then opened a small document in which I was able to drag elements over from the main document and create my font that way. I saved each letter as a layered psd and then flattened the image to drag and drop the finished letter into the main large document.

Saving the PSD layered version enabled me to reuse parts of the letters as elements for new ones. I feel this enabled me to easily keep some kind of uniformity and this in turn gave me scope to play around with the various ideas which suggested themselves to me whilst I was working.

The next step was to check out the FontCreator program which I downloaded. Admitedly it was the trial version but enough for the sake of this project and to get a taste of the program and for making Fonts.

I had a good look through the User Manual before making the font, as I too often just open new software and jump in before really getting a good idea of how to use it. This has, in the past proved to be one way of learning a program but considering the time limit on this part of the module, it seemed wisest to at least read the instructions. The manual does make it seem remarkably easy.

There is some interesting information regarding ‘True Type’, ‘Open Type’ and ‘Font Copyright’ which, I believe, should be read for future reference by anyone making a font.