New Fonts From Old
Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 8:17 pm
If you like decorative fonts, this is an easy way to make one from an existing font. I used my own Garava Heavy to test the theory.
Stage 1
• Copy the letters you want to decorate to new empty glyphs. Hinting will be preserved if they are hinted.
• Create two or three new glyphs containing the decorations, which need to be anticlockwise contours.
• Select the decorations you want to use, and the copied letter you want to use it with.
Stage 2
• Open the original undecorated glyph (the one with mappings), make it empty and paste the clipboard contents. The result will be a composite glyph like this:
Stage 3
• Move the decorative elements — using guidelines to position them if it helps.
• Repeat using control to copy composite glyph members within the composite glyph.
• Press Control H to view the results without any screen clutter. Press H to exit from clean screen mode.
Download my Garava Decorated font if you want to see how it works in detail. The free and OpenSource program 7-Zip will open 7z archives. I don't think I'll be doing any more with this font. It was just a proof of concept. Perhaps others may find the technique useful. Any composites that use the decorated glyphs will also be decorated.
Stage 1
• Copy the letters you want to decorate to new empty glyphs. Hinting will be preserved if they are hinted.
• Create two or three new glyphs containing the decorations, which need to be anticlockwise contours.
• Select the decorations you want to use, and the copied letter you want to use it with.
Stage 2
• Open the original undecorated glyph (the one with mappings), make it empty and paste the clipboard contents. The result will be a composite glyph like this:
Stage 3
• Move the decorative elements — using guidelines to position them if it helps.
• Repeat using control to copy composite glyph members within the composite glyph.
• Press Control H to view the results without any screen clutter. Press H to exit from clean screen mode.
Download my Garava Decorated font if you want to see how it works in detail. The free and OpenSource program 7-Zip will open 7z archives. I don't think I'll be doing any more with this font. It was just a proof of concept. Perhaps others may find the technique useful. Any composites that use the decorated glyphs will also be decorated.