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Project two Create a typeface

Adobe Illustrator and FontLab Studio

HypeForTypes Dawn Lewandowski explains how to convert an illustrated alphabet into a quality display font
Its all very well creating beautiful, intricate illustrated letterforms, but how do you convert them into a usable display font without sacrificing the detail or quality? As a type production specialist at HypeForType, one of my toughest assignments was the production of Alex Trochuts D&AD award-winning Neo Deco, featured here. This beautiful face is built from sections of fine lines and, while they were drawn with mathematical precision, converting them into a usable font posed some problems. Most fonts use the default UPM (Units per eM) value of 1,000. However, pasting these particular outlines into the glyph cells in FontLab using that value resulted in literally thousands of font audit violations. It can be tempting to overlook these warnings and generate your fonts out anyway, and many amateur producers do. But there are very valid reasons for these flags, and ignoring them will either lead to a mushy-looking mass or an occasional broken fine line not a good result. Using Trochuts Neo Deco display font (available at www.hypefortype.com), this project will guide you through the process of creating a detailed and eyecatching font from your vector creations, without sacrificing quality.

Design an intricate display font

Dawn Lewandowski Type production specialist for HypeForType, Lewandowski has worked with some very challenging, intricate typefaces. www.hypefortype.com

On your disc Youll find six free fonts: Hiruko (Black, Light/Regular Oblique and Alternate Outline), Gen and Sukato worth $185, plus a sample glyph from Neo Deco (noncommercial use only)

Skills Import vector letters into FontLab Deal with flags and errors Understand UPM values Retain your intricate details

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Create an intricate display font 01

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So youve already designed your alphabet. The first stage in turning it into a font is to check through all the characters for consistency, eliminating potential problems like stray points and overlapping elements. Its usually faster to fix these issues in Illustrator before attempting an import into FontLab.

Font info and metadata

This panel can be quite intimidating, but if youre a beginner you only need to worry about a few fields. Select the Names and Copyright tab, enter your font family name, choose the weight from the drop-down menu, and type in the full style name such as BoldItalicCondensed. Select the Open Type Specific Names tab, and click on the Build Open Type Names symbol. You can skip the Additional Open Type Names tab. Now go to Copyright Information, enter your name and click the Build Copyright and Trademark Records symbol. Next, select the Embedding tab. Choose Everything is allowed (installable mode), and check the Allow sub-setting. The next tab, Designer Information, is optional, while the Version and Identification tab will help eliminate font conflicts for users. Click the diamond symbol next to the empty field labelled TrueType Version Record, then under the Identification Settings tab, click the diamond next to the empty field under TrueType Unique ID Number, leaving the Vendor Code blank. You can ignore the other tabs in this section. For more detailed information, see your cover disc.

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Its worth considering creating an extended character case when putting your typeface together. This will open your design up to a much larger market, giving people the option to use it across any number of languages.

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Once all your characters are ready, open FontLab, and go to File>New. Save the file (Ctrl/Cmnd+S). Next, go to File>Font Info, and enter as much as you can into the fonts metadata. Pressing the diamond icon at the bottom of each window will automatically fill in some fields for you. For more detailed instructions, open Extended Steps.doc on your cover disc. Remember that although the initial field in the Metrics and Dimensions tab doesnt normally need changing, when dealing with detailed typefaces such as Neo Deco you should choose a higher UPM size.

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Project two Create a typeface 04

Before importing your characters into FontLab, first ensure they are big enough to be worked on Alexs had to be enlarged because they were less than 2.5 inches tall. As long as your sizing is kept within a range of 101-150%, FontLab will suffice, but its best to do your primary resizing within the program you used to create your lettering. If you used Illustrator, double-click the Enlarging icon, choose Uniform, and enter the Scale in the field (I use US Letter as my optimum import size for the average 1000UPM font, but I tripled the target size for Neo Deco, enlarging each letter by 1500%). Click OK. Now press Ctrl/ Cmnd+C and make a copy.

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You can now move your letter into a glyph cell in FontLab. Double-click the cell, and press Ctrl/Cmnd+V to paste the copied letter. To adjust the placement, click and drag it into position at the lower left. If you need to resize your letter further, go to Window>Panels>Transformation. Click on the enlarging icon on the panel, then check the Uniform box and choose Bottom Left Corner from the drop-down Center menu. Enter the percentage (I enlarged Neo Deco by another 122% here), and hit Return.

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If youre making an all-caps face such as this one, making use of the descender space will allow you to retain the largest possible glyph. I set a target cap height of 1930 (1970 for round characters, 40 units below the baseline and above the cap height). As shown, the baseline was actually at -215.

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The more perfect the outline, the better the font. To ensure that youre achieving optimal results, make sure you regularly use FontLabs Audit features. These audits can be turned on selectively through the Preferences Panel.

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Line segment too short

Create an intricate display font 08

If youre concentrating on a letter that consists of many non-vertical lines, it will help to turn off the Semivertical line audit. I had many extremum and connection flags that required tending at this stage, but my primary concern was the Line segment too short flag a result of fixing these in the 1000UPM size. In this situation, select the audit and check to make sure that no flags show on the glyphs. By utilising the maximum number of units possible, you will eliminate this flag.

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There is a very valid reason for this flag. On average, a glyphs outline within a font cell is nearly as big as a sheet of writing paper. The flag occurs whenever the line segment is less than 4 units in width when used, that segment is reduced to miniscule fractions of a unit in size. Printing technology is still dependent upon pixels, which cant be halved or quartered, so this will lead to broken lines. Ignoring this flag will result in an unprofessional-looking font.

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Once youve eliminated all the flags, employ the remaining standard font production techniques to the spacing and kerning of the font. Go to Window>New Metrics Window. I strongly suggest using Autohinting on fonts of this complexity its a default setting in the Font Info panel. First, adjust your side bearings. Double-click a glyph, and drag the side bearings to achieve the desired spacing in the Metrics window. Now open the quick select drop-down menu, use the alphabet sections to fill the field, then make sure you type it out to check the spacing before moving onto the next glyph. Once youve completed all the glyphs, you can begin kerning. Click on the letter to the right of the space you want to adjust, and drag the bar to move the letter. Check all letter combinations upper- and lowercase and basic punctuation as well.

Once youve finished spacing and kerning your font, its time to generate a working typeface. The most common format is TrueType or OTF. Open the Extended Steps document on your cover disc for detailed instructions on how to do this. You will receive an error message upon generation of an OTF version. This is a warning you will need to overlook it actually refers to the fact that youre using an unconventional UPM that may cause display issues on screen. This is unavoidable, so choose Ignore. Most programs dont make display concessions for non-1000UPM sizes. The result often shows a character that appears to be cut off. The easiest way to fix this issue is to place a carriage return at the top of the text box so the entire character can be seen. You now have a beautiful display font, with all the detail of the original face.

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