Custom Fonts

[ttttt]

I'm not sure if this is in the right forum, but here goes:
Well, I was creating a new version of my site, and I'd like to have my own custom font, which I will design and create.
Does anyone know how to create a font without using expensive software, or maybe only free software or just code.
Or does anyone know of a good tutorial.
Thanks,

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

Did you intend on drawing the font by hand on a piece of paper then scanning it in or were you going to design an the font faces using a graphics editor?

[Graft-Creative]

I'd like to have my own custom font, which I will design and create.
Does anyone know how to create a font without using expensive software, or maybe only free software or just code.


Phew....designing a font is not a task to be underestimated, there's a heck of a lot of theory involved - in fact you probably wouldn't believe how much work went into most of the fonts we casually use day to day...

Most of which were created before there was software for such tasks, just using basic drawing tools etc - remember pen, paper, rulers, and those funny things for drawing curves with ;) That's how most of today's popular fonts were created.

...then there are fonts that were designed to work particularly well in a pixel based environment, Verdana and Chicago being examples.

But as Aero was getting at, it depends what you want to do...

If you want to design a full font that you can use just as any other font, you'd need to be looking at something like Fontographer (about $400 I believe)

However, if you just want to create a custom font for a logo, or header or whatever, then Illustrator could be a solution, or any other vector based graphics program.

Kind regards,

Gary

[felgall]

The other thing to remember is that even if you do create a custom font that you will be the only person with that font installed on your computer and so you will be the only person to see your site in that font. Everyone else will see the site using fonts that they already have on their computer and will be extremely unlikely to download and install your font just to see your page the way you want.

[ttttt]

So you couldn't upload your font to your site or anything?
I was planning on being able to create fonts either way.
Thanks for the replies,

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

If you did your font would need to be used on an image or in flash. Others won't be able to see it if they don't have it.

[mark87]

Yup; image replacement (http://www.stopdesign.com/articles/replace_text/), sIFR - Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/), and WEFT (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/weft3/default.htm) (IE only), are the only options really for using a custom font. It's far easier to stick with the normal web fonts unless you wish to just use it for the odd heading etc where an image would be okay.