July 2010
Intermediate to advanced
272 pages
7h 40m
English
Content preview from Type Rules!: The Designer's Guide to Professional Typography, Third EditionBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Chapter 12. DESIGNING YOUR OWN TYPEFACE
Designing a typeface is not for the faint of heart. In most cases, designing a full-blown, professional-quality typeface should be left to those type designers, letterers, and calligraphers who have a foundation in letterforms and a strong interest in typeface design, as well as the time, patience, and perseverance to pursue it. But if your heart is hardy, read on!
Your design concept might be one that is for your own personal use, a custom job for a client, or a more serious typographic venture that you might want to make available to others. In any case, be realistic and allow your first exploration to be a learning experience more than anything else. No matter how terrific your first creation might seem to your own eyes, a type designer (and a high-quality typeface) is not made in a day. Learning how to draw with Bézier curves takes a lot of practice and can be very frustrating until you get to the point where it begins to feel natural and instinctive. In addition, understanding the concepts of spacing, kerning, and hinting are not the same as applying them to an actual typeface, just as appreciating music or fine art is not the same as creating it. So be patient when honing your new skills; your next type venture will most certainly improve from an aesthetic as well as a technical standpoint. Keeping this in mind, it is best to start simple; save your more complicated ideas for later.
HANDWRITING FONTS: A GOOD PLACE TO BEGIN
A relatively ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.