The reason I’ve decided to use Glyphs is because it offers up a comprehensive workflow with a vast array of tools and the ability to build a full family of weights and styles within one source file. It’s built on familiar UI principles with many of the shortcuts for the tools being the same shortcuts you would use in Adobe CC which is way better for me. Glyphs manages to make complex tasks and tools feel intuitive from the outset. You can also take control and define your own preferences by way of using custom parameters.
The pros and cons of using Glyphs.
Pros:
- Easy to learn, easy to use (easier for me because of time constraints)
- Combined text and drawing views, in which layers can be automatically generated
- Basic OpenType features that can be previewed
- Scriptable and expandable
- Comes in two versions
- Pretty much same shortcuts as Adobe CC
Cons:
- Mac only (not really a con as i only use Macs)
- Well there isn’t any cons hence why i decided to use this software!!!
Even though i have decided to use Glyphs (after hours of research on the best platforms) as my choice of font builder for this project, i will however continue to learn on other platforms when i have more time after university.
Lets get started…
The first step to created each letter head was setting the parameters to the same specifications i first drew them in illustrator. Once i had them in place i could then begin the tracing stage of each individual letter using the pen tool on Glyphs which is very similar to Adobe Illustrator.
Capital Letters
Lowercase Letters.
Letter Spacing. (Tracking)
First off all i had to get my head around Spacing/Tracking and Kerning!
So letter spacing refers to the amount of space between a group of letters to affect density in a line or block of text. Letter spacing can be confused with kerning. Letter spacing refers to the overall spacing of a word or block of text affecting its overall density and texture. Kerning is a term applied specifically to the spacing adjustment of two particular characters to correct for visually uneven spacing. Kerning adjusts the letters closer together (negative spacing), tracking adjusts the letters further apart (positive spacing). The letters AV, for example, have to overlap in any usual typeface, otherwise at least one them ends up looking lost. The kerning is tightened to snug them up to one another.
Moving on to just the spacing/tracking i had to work out how to change the spacing while in a preview mode this is where you can type text, in order to edit and test your font. So to access this i had to go to view > open tab (Cmd-T). The selected glyphs are then opened in the edit view, and the text tool (T) is now active.
I can now type any text i want, and edit any of the typed glyphs. This is one of the key features of the software that i prefer over fontographer.
See Spacing with a little kerning video on USB
The first step I’ve taken is sorting out the spacing with the two letters ‘n’ and ‘o’ ive used these two letters as a starting point because they have the structural characteristics provide a useful basis for making many of the other letters in the font.
Although the ‘o’ is especially useful for working out the basic spacing, it’s not going to help me design other characters — not necessarily even the ‘b’ or ‘d’.
The letter ‘n’ is very useful because it helps making the ‘m’, ‘h’, and ‘u’. The other factor that i need to weigh when choosing letters for the foundation is how frequently the letter is used. A letter that’s used a lot will help me make test words so i should consider moving onto the vowels next or further more using ‘hanbergfontsive’ again as i contains the most frequent letters used.
From this process so far i’ve learnt that it is impossible to create a coherent set of characters without studying them in combination. And FRUSTRATINGLY, it seems that there is no absolute formula to fit all the characters perfectly: correct spacing is the result of a combination of reasonable judgement of the eye or trail and error, and the individual designs of each letter have a massive impact on this.
Again like i did on illustrator ive decided to use a big sentence that contains most of these letters as a better starting point. Below you can see some of the letters are still off…
Now that the spacing is even it still doesn’t look quite right.. this is ok because certain letter such as the ‘o’ and ‘v’, ‘o’ and ‘x’ will be altered in the kerning section for individual letter combinations.
So through testing and writing different words ive come across and error in my design. The lowercase letter ‘k’ isn’t sitting right which will mean the uppercase won’t either. The leg comes out to far on the bottom so this will mean back to the drawing board (illustrator) for these two letters…
Letter Changes
After looking over the letters ive decided to change some of the capital letters as i feel they look to thin on some areas. The letters ‘k’ ‘K’ an ‘R’ are easy enough to change in Glyphs.
The letter ‘B’ needed to be updated because as the process went on of developing the letters the style changed slightly and because I’m bit of a perfectionist i couldn’t let this to letter go.
Kerning.
Manipulating the whitespace enclosed inside a pair of glyphs is called kerning. Kerning is something you do very late in the Typeface making process. Ive tried to get as far as possible with properly spacing my letters. But ive noticed that, no matter how well i do it, some letter combinations never really work out properly. This is the part where i have to kern individual letter combinations to correct the spacing below is an example of the kerning.
Notice in the first picture how the letter T seems separated from the other two letters. this is why some letter i have to make specific adjustments and combinations so that when the typeface is used it will look seemless.
The kerning process was difficult because i couldn’t think of anything to write so i just kept writing random sentences and adding capital letters through trail and error until everything looked right.
After not finding a fault i thought of an idea for testing the typeface in action. Its to export the type face and change the font of part of my dissertation to see how it would work with big blocks of type (also to see if i can see any missed spacing/Kerning).
Video Example of trail and error kerning
See kerning example Videos on USB
The accented characters was massive pain to keep consistent because i had the automatic setting on that puts the accents in the same place this proved difficult for me.
After managing to turn of the meeting i had to set all accents manually which was time consuming but worked out perfect
Full Kerning Table.
Final Major Project 