Create Custom Fonts Using Inkscape & FontForge in 2023 (Great for Selling Online!)

[@3_14pie]

Finally, a decent font making tutorial, thank you so much

[@martinbraun599]

The SVG font editor was completely new to me. Dear Nick, thank you very much for the constant new suggestions and user tricks. I actually went to the trouble of digitizing my own handwriting and converting it into an Open Type font. Each letter was written on the graphics board and post-processed in Inkscape. Now I can also put my handwriting on paper using the keyboard. For me this is a great thing. Once again I can only thank Nick very much.

[@doctorbezier6561]

Crazy good tutorial for such a niche thing. Thanks a ton!

[@NOPerative]

Changing the origin for font rendering might apply to ltr & rtl (my guess anyway) where 0:0 is for ltr. For anyone unfamiliar with the acronyms above: ltr = left to right & rtl = right to left reading orders; English documents are read from left to right (ltr). Good vid.

[@Barakon]

So…is 0:1 for right to left? Cuz I need to know how to use this to make hebrew fonts.

[@NOPerative]

@@Barakon you would have to assign the upper right corner coordinates. Whenever you actually create and package the font using tools like FontForge you should absolutely be able to configure the font output as a right to left font and the operating system and or browser will then know how to render the font properly. The only time you will have to manually determine origin points is when you would be manually laying out text as an example writing your own text rendering component for an editor you're developing on your own. At any rate, if the reading order is set to ltr (left to right) the example I gave of the origin coordinates 0:0 would still apply as the underlying system would then flip the width and x coordinate for you automatically.

[@anameyoucantremember]

Amazing! I rarely find a video that answers ALL my questions regarding a specific topic. You managed to do it. Very thanks many much 😁😁

[@jademonass2954]

thank you so much!! i had no idea inkscape had a feature for that

[@ar3designs]

Very Useful. Thank you!!!

[@gardiner_bryant]

How does one create a color font with multiple paths for a single glyph? Is that even possible with Inkscape?

[@user-ih6cd5tk7v]

Thanks so much. Fantastic video! Incredibly well done and useful. A+

[@ZarviroffSerge]

Brilliant. I've been developing an app for android for a while now and now came to conclusion I have to make a font for optimization purposes. And it was just pure hell, especially poking around ff. I've used Linux for quite a while back 10 years ago, but omg the app is horrible on windows. Thanks for the guide. I especially liked the inkscape part.

[@martinbraun599]

An incredibly great video! Thank you very much for all the valuable information!

[@leiocerayt]

thanks for the tut!

[@richardstewart6900]

Well dang! A couple of years back I retired after 30+ years as a sandblast glass engraver. If only I'd had this back then!!! All told, we probably had around a couple of thousand fonts although not all were installed and some of them were duplicates. We really only used a set few though, but even some of them were either poorly drawn or needed tweaking in some way e.g. spacing etc. This looks like it would have been very handy. I wonder how easy it would have been to use for strengthening the finer parts of certain script fonts?

[@jimmihenry]

Nice, thank you and a big thumb up! Missing glyph did raise a question mark... Edit button, i would never found out its convenient function.

[@crafterofbeer]

Been looking for a tutorial like this for a while, cheers! Got up to the part about kerning and the slider to adjust the spacing between the two glyphs does nothing. Anyone else have this issue?

[@chriscadman5715]

Excellent lesson! Can you tell me how to import an existing TTF and change the background to opaque, so when I use it in a graphics app it will block all the stuff that sits behind the font? Thanks...

[@SinSumma]

Honestly I've found it easier to just copy/paste my gylph from inkscape into FontForge. Turns out FontForge can automatically import svg data and will even automatically convert strokes to paths for you, so it's way easier and way less fussy.

[@abw21701]

Quick question: Could I use Font Forge to create right double quotes to go with my left double quotes?

[@astatine0085]

this is great, thank you

[@marcelomiguelbazan]

Hello. It's very interesting video. I've got a question: At 07:03, after setting "Horizontal advanced x" to 700, don't you have to click the "Setup canvas again, or is it optional? IMHO, to "resize" the canvas would be better because you can have a more accurate idea of the real width of the glyphs. Thank you and greetings from Argentina. Marcelo Miguel Bazan.

[@Anothuor]

Awesome thanks dude

[@ianscales2382]

Inkscape seems surprisingly good for font design, because of the specialised SVG Font Editor. Maybe it's better for this than CorelDraw or Affinity Designer, which don't have the specialised tools.

[@simplekaty]

This is great tutorial. I got my font to work perfectly inside Inkscape. However, when I used my font inside OpenWriter, the kerning was reset / looked off; the overall size was tiny and the ligatures couldn't be generated. Is there a way to fix these things by exporting from FontForge?

[@guduguminchu]

Thanks

[@irvanprima1377]

thanks this help a lot

[@searlask6922]

Is there a way to do the glyph without hitting union? it makes the letters look all weird

[@chrisandersen3213]

hey there. The Horizontal/Vertical origin will be important for use in other font editors/vector software. It basically sets a rotation point..

[@tomfjallstrom5196]

Hello, great video. You mentioned briefly that the font will automatically come out as fully filled in the preview, and I was just interested in if there is some way of making it not do that 🤔

[@MH-xx5wp]

This was the best video for this. But when I generate the font, it puts all the letters on top of each other in a blob. What am I doing wrong?

[@Kompanie17]

How do import an existing font into inkscape to just change some letters here and there?

[@martinbraun599]

All very cool! Only the special characters under FFF or EEE or similar don't work properly for me. It works in FontForge under "New Metric Window". But not under Windows with Word or Inkscape, etc. There I only see the three-letter combinations instead of the special characters. Does anyone have a tip for me that could help? Actually, I imagine that I did everything as demonstrated in the video.

[@arianerodrigues_]

🎉thanks

[@williamdoust]

Hi, thanks for this. Can you vectorize doodles/import svgs to tuen them into dingbat fonts?

[@SweaterCatDesigns]

Definitely! You'll probably want to stick with simple graphics though

[@gwenturo9550]

Going well until I tried testing the font in the preview textbox. followed all your steps but my text is not filled in, it's just an outline.

[@gwenturo9550]

drew a figure-eight and figured-eight out :)

[@TSMSnation]

7:55 nothing put into the advance box changes anything for me. rip

[@jackal242]

I wish there was a way to just quickly change ONE character in an existing font.

[@laika9313]

How can I not have fontforge export using glyphs from a default font?

[@linny356]

I finished my font, but when I went to test it out in fontforge, it didn't work. For example, I have characters for both 'a' and 'ar', yet when I went to type 'ar' it only displayed the character for 'a'. It worked perfectly fine in inkscape. Is this a common problem? Or will this be fixed when I export it? Please help :)

[@eti313]

Great video! Where is a good place to sell fonts online?

[@SweaterCatDesigns]

Thanks! Etsy and Creative Market are the most popular online marketplaces for selling fonts, but there are also many others, like Envato Elements and My Fonts.

[@YAMAGUCCIJP]

When I generate font I get a 'bad private dictionary' error. The font does however install and all the ligatures and alternate characters seem to be working. Anyone know if this needs to be fixed?

[@Mariam-Mina]

How to draw letters neatly in Inkscape, using bezier tool and mouse is not making the letters neat. I use pen stylus on my touch screen, it improved the outcome but not the wow result. Any suggestion? And what other software people use to make their own fonts with beautiful handwritten neat fonts? Thanks

[@SweaterCatDesigns]

If you go to the Pen/Freehand Tool, turn on the "use pressure input" button at the top (it has a brush icon), and set Smoothing to something high, I find that works better for getting a handwritten look, especially with a stylus. Plus, if your touch screen supports pressure input, you can use the pressure of the stylus to change the thickness of the lines (using the Min and Max settings of the Pencil Tool).

[@Mariam-Mina]

@@SweaterCatDesigns thanks for your reply. I tried this before but it’s not giving me the persistent neatest effect. I guess people who make their fonts most likely they use different software.

[@akabami2161]

You could use another program like Photoshop or Krita (which is free) to design the font, and then trace it using the bezier tool to turn it into a vector graphic.

[@moonraker2114]

Thanks buddie, have never even heard of this Krita software. Learning it now!