If you are bored of the same old default fonts offered by Windows, there are two things you can do — download new fonts from the internet, or create your own fonts. We are going to discuss the second option here — how to create custom fonts that could be based on your own handwriting as well!
Construct fonts
This is a free online font creator that allows creating and sharing fonts using a simple font editor. Unlike some other custom font creation tools, it doesn’t require the user to scan handwritten characters against alphabets and numbers, rather it allows the user to directly draw alphabets over the screen using the mouse.
On the home page of Font Struct, press the ‘Start Now’ button to get started. This brings up the login and sign-up page. Get registered here by pressing ‘Sign Up Now’ button. Enter the correct email address and fill in other details and press ‘Sign Up’ button and then login using the link sent over email.
By default, the user is logged into a private home page that allows font creation, with a link to a public page where fonts can be showcased for other users to see and download. on the private home page, press ‘Create New FontStruction’ button. Enter a name for the font being created and press ‘Start FontStructing’ button. Wait for a while as the font editor is loaded in browser window.
This is a sleek looking and user-friendly interface. Instead of typical brush tools to draw, there are a number of brick shaped to give smooth edges and variety of shapes to the font lines and edges. In this way, create custom characters using the horizontal slide bar at the bottom. Press the ‘Save’ button often while editing fonts to ensure it doesn’t get lost.
At any point in time, press the ‘Preview’ button to try out the new fonts right there in the browser window without downloading the font.
For more detailed options such as extra rulers and measurement information, minimal and full screen view, etc., use the ‘Advanced’ dropdown. Once done with the editing, press the ‘Download’ button and save the ZIP file. Then there’s the ‘Zoom’ option and changing the basic stencil of characters from Latin to say Arabic or Greek, etc. And there’s a ‘Tools’ window too with standard items such as pencil draw, eraser, rectangle, lines and pen in order to help the editing of fonts.
Create through handwriting
Sites such as Your Fonts (www.yourfonts.com), Fontifier (www.fontifier.com) and Font Capture (www.fontcapture.com) offer templates that can be downloaded for font creation. The basic idea behind all such sites is the same — download a PDF or an image file that has all the possible characters already printed in a commonly used font. Print this sheet and write a handwritten version against each printed character and complete the sheet.
Upload this sheet as scanned file and let the website construct fonts out of it. This is done by cutting the boxes in which the characters are written down. The next step is to preview the font online and make necessary changes if required. Finally, download the font file and install it in Windows.
Fonts are downloaded as files having extension TTF (true type fonts). Installing fonts in Windows XP is quite straightforward. Go to Start > Control Panel > Fonts. Select ‘Install New Font’ from ‘File’ menu and browse to the location where the font file is downloaded. Or simply drop the font file in ‘Fonts’ folder under ‘Windows’ folder using ‘Windows Explorer’.
Though standard fonts are always recommend for formal communication, custom fonts can always be fun and a new learning experience.
Via DAWN
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