Learning type design
Beginners guides to type design
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Design with FontForge
This is a fantastic introduction to type design, regardless of what software you use.
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Getting started with type design
by Jonathan Hoefler
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Glyphs Tutorials
most tutorials here would be useful to non-Glyphs users too!
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GT Academy
Ongoing series of Instagram posts on how to construct certain glyphs.
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Ohno Essential RoboFont
Video class introduction to the classic editor
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Ohno Type School Articles
Series of articles teaching the basics of type design.
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Type Design School
Video guide by Lynne Yun
Books
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Designing Fonts: An Introduction to Professional Type Design
by Chris Campe and Ulrike Rausch. A German edition is also available.
-
Designing Type
by Karen Cheng.
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How to create typefaces: From sketch to screen
by Cristóbal Henestrosa, Laura Meseguer, José Scaglione. Also available in a Spanish edition.
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How to design fonts?
A 140-page PDF and print-on-demand book by Blaze Type Foundry.
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Italic: What gives Typography its emphasis
by Hendrik Weber. Also available in German.
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Legibility: How and why typography affects ease of reading
Book by Mary Dyson. Available online for free in English and Spanish.
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Recommended Type Design and Typography Books
discussion on TypeDrawers
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Teachers, show us your reading lists
discussion on typedrawers
Workshops
Tip: follow your favourite type conferences – some of them present workshops and other events throughout the year.
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Cyrillicsly
workshops for learning Cyrillic type design
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Letterform Archive
presents a variety of workshops and other events
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Type Design Class
Online workshops by Viktor Baltus for learning type design and typography.
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Type@Cooper
presents a variety of workshops and other events
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Typographische Gesellschaft München
Typographic Society of Munich hosts a wide range of in-person workshops and courses on typography, including type design.
Courses
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I Love Typography Academy
ILT academy exists to promote expert teaching of type design, font production, and typography. Courses cover various script systems and are taught in a number of languages.
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Ohno Type School Courses
A series of free courses for RoboFont users.
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Practica Program
A two-part, 6 week + 18 week part-time program for learning type design.
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Tipo-g
A type design school in Barcelona, Spain. Currently teaching a 21-week part-time program with an emphasis on variable fonts.
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Type Design Class
Self-guided courses by Viktor Baltus for learning type design and typography.
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Type Electives
An online school with a range of type design and typography courses.
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TypeParis
A 6-week intensive type design programme held each summer in Paris (in English).
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Variable Font Course
An on-demand video course by Arthur Reinders Folmer on creating variable fonts, and variable colour fonts.
Full-time programs
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ANRT
at ENSAD (Nancy, France)
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ECAL
A two-year master’s degree program in Switzerland.
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EsadType
at Esad Amiens (Amiens, France)
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MATD
at University of Reading (Reading, UK)
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Type & Media
MA in Type Design at the KABK (The Hague, Netherlands)
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Type West
at Letterform Archive (San Francisco, USA)
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Type@Cooper
at Cooper Union (New York City, USA)
Software
Discounted student licenses are available with many of these applications.
Commercial font editors
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Drop & Type
An application that generates Japanese or Latin fonts from Adobe Illustrator files.
- ¥4,000 JPY
- Windows
- Mac
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FontArk
A browser-based font editor that’s currently in open beta.
- Free (while in beta)
-
FontLab
An all-in-one font editor for Mac and Windows – first released in 1992.
- $499 USD
- Windows
- Mac
-
Fontself
Plugins for Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop for creating fonts within Creative Suite. Also available as an iPad app.
- $39–59 USD
- Windows
- Mac
- iPad
-
Glyphs
A fully-featured, Mac-based font editor with an active community.
- €299
- Mac
-
Glyphs Mini
A paired down version of the full Glyphs app, meant for beginners. Limited to designing single-style fonts (no multiple masters or variable fonts).
- €49
- Mac
-
High Logic Font Creator
A Windows-native font editor.
- $49–199 USD
- Windows
-
RoboFont
A Python-based font editor that puts an emphasis on scripting and extendability.
- €400
- Mac
-
TypeTool
A simpler font editor for beginners, from the makers of FontLab.
- $49 USD
- Windows
Free and open source (FOSS) font editors
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Birdfont
A cross-platform, pay-what-you-want font editor written in the Vala programming language. Paid “Plus” version can export Color fonts, OpenType-CFF fonts, and single stroke fonts for CNC.
- Windows
- Mac
- Linux
- BSD
-
FontForge
A cross-platform, FOSS font editor written in C. Can export many formats. First released in 1994.
- Free
- Windows
- Mac
- GNU+Linux.
-
Fontra
A browser-based FOSS font editor that allows distributed teams to work on a font together. Currently unfinished and in development (2023). Developed by Black[Foundry] and Google Fonts.
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FontStruct
FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create modular fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks.
-
Gerb
A FOSS font editor written in Rust. Currently unfinished and in development (2023).
-
Glyphr Studio
A browser-based FOSS font editor.
-
Modular Font Editor K
A modular, Rust-based, FOSS font editor. Currently unfinished and in development (2023).
-
Runebender
A FOSS font editor, also written in Rust. Currently unfinished and in development (2023).
-
TruFont (discontinued)
A cross-platform FOSS font editor, written in Python. Now discontinued (2023).
- Windows
- Mac
- Linux
-
Typlr.app
A browser-based font editor by Evgeny Agasyants, currently in open beta.
Community
Groups
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Alphacrit
Online event series of type critiques, by Alphabettes
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Fonts r Magic
an informal weekly Zoom meeting for type designers to chat and show their work, hosted on Friday afternoons by Mirko Velimirovic. Posting Zoom links publicly is probably asking for trouble, so I’d say just send Mirko a DM to join!
-
Type Crit Crew
a free resource for type design students to meet 1–1 with experienced type designers for virtual critiques
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Type Twitter
a list of over 400 type foundries to follow on Twitter
-
TypeDrawers
discussion forum for type designers
Conferences
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ATypI
A global type conference, hosted in a different country each year in September.
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Dynamic Font Day
A conference on digital typography and technology, presented by Typographische Gesellschaft München (Typographic Society of Munich).
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Fontstand Conference
Annual typography conference organized by Fontstand, the typeface discovery and rental app.
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Future of Reading
Conference about the future of reading and typography. Hosted by FH Münster, Germany.
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Inscript
A five-day online conference showcasing presentations at the overlap of typography and technology.
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Kerning (discontinued)
Kerning is the first international conference in Italy dedicated solely to typography and web typography. Last event was in 2019, but the organizers are keen to host future events if sponsors come forward.
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Leipziger Typotage
The Leipziger Typotage is an annual event on type design and typography organised by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Druckkunst Leipzig e.V. since 1995 hosted at Museum für Druckkunst Leipzig, Germany.
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Multilingüe
Online conference on writing and typography for native languages from Latin America. Hosted by the Type Directors Club.
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Now24
A one-day conference (in English) held in Paris each year by TypeParis.
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Robothon
Triennial conference on font software & technology. Hosted in-person in The Hague, Netherlands.
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Signs of the times
A two-day hybrid conference organized by Granshan, an organization that celebrates non-Latin typefaces and typography.
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TypeCon
Annual conference presented by S{o}TA. Hosted in-person in Portland, Oregon.
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TypeWknd
An online-only type conference
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Typographics
Annually in June at The Cooper Union in New York City. Typographics hosts in-person and streaming events, plus workshops, a book fair, and TypeLab, an informal, multi-day, global typographic hackathon.
Events & Lectures
Events that occur regularly (except Conferences), or organizations that host regular events on type design and typography.
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Future Fonts HyperTalks
A new online event series, featuring lightning talks from designers, which may or may not be related to fonts.
-
Letterform Archive
Letterform Archive in San Francisco hosts many lectures and events, both online and in-person.
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St. Bride Foundation
St. Bride Foundation in London hosts many lectures and events on printing, design, and typography.
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Type Electives
Type Electives hosts lectures and events that go beyond traditional type design topics.
Associations
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ATypI
A global organization representing type designers and foundries. Holds an annual conference, hosted in a different country each year in September.
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Granshan
An organization that promotes and celebrates non-Latin type design and typography. Holds an annual or biannual type design competition, followed by a conference and exhibition.
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SoTA
“An open community dedicated to supporting and advancing the typographic arts and design education.” Organizer of TypeCon.
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Type Directors Club
Type Directors Club is an international organization promoting typography and type design. Since 1946 they’ve hosted events, conferences, and competitions in New York City and around the world. Each year they produce Typography Annual, recognizing the year’s best typographers and type designers.
Media
Social media, multimedia, type news media
Podcasts
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Creative Characters
by Monotype — Bill Connolly interviews type designers and other creative characters
-
Designed This Way
conversations with designers and other creative folks, including several type designers
-
Ohno Radio
James Edmondson chats with up-and-coming and well-established type designers
-
The Interrogang Podcast
“A weekly briefing and discussion of type, design, and creativity.” by Proof&Co.
-
The Tiny Typecast
Glenn Fleishman talks with type designers, calligraphers, letterpress printers, historians, and more. RSS link
-
The Weekly Typographic
from The League of Moveable Type
-
Type Radio
the oldest and most beloved podcast for type designers – interviews at conferences from 2005–2020
Publications
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Design Regression
An academic mini journal publishing texts that are about design for reading and reading-related research
-
Font Review Journal
Deep-dive reviews of fonts, by Bethany Heck.
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Footnotes
A print-only periodical dedicated to type design.
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Type Magazine
Print and online magazine on type and typography.
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TYPE01
News and articles from the world of type design. Online and print.
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Typographica
Typeface reviews, articles on type design and typography.
-
Typography papers
An academic journal published by the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading and the Hyphen Press. Free PDFs available.
Blogs
Type foundry and type designer blogs, or blogs that frequently feature articles on type design.
-
Blaze Type Blog
-
Type Design Class: Resources
A series of articles and tutorials by Viktor Baltus on type design.
Streamers
Watch a type designer!
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Adobe Fonts Livestreams
Discussing type with Adobe’s foundry partners.
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akimbo.black
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Alanna Munro
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Alex Slobzheninov
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Blaze Type
-
Daniel Nisbet
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Eli Heuer
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SophiaTypeLove
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Stephen Nixon (Arrow Type)
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typedesign_bk
Character design
Latin
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Context of Diacritics
An analysis of languages that use Latin diacritics and the frequencies of letters and letter pairs with diacritics.
-
Diacritics resources Twitter thread
by Aleksandra Samuļenkova, thread listing many resources concerning diacritics and special characters of the Latin script
-
diacritics.typo.cz
by Filip Blažek
-
How to draw a Capital Sharp S
A guide to drawing the German capital eszett (ẞ) by Ralf Herrmann.
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How to Draw a Proper Capital Eszett
A guide to drawing the German capital eszett (ẞ) by Christian Thalmann.
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Microsoft Character Design Standards
Guidelines and best practises for drawing the Latin alphabet, as well as figures, diacritics, punctuation and symbols.
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On diacritics
A general introduction to the design of diacritics by David Březina
-
The Insects Project
Central European diacritics
-
Vietnamese Typography
by Donny Trương, comprehensive resource typographic features and diacritics in Vietnamese
Italics & Obliques
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Design an Italic Typeface
On-demand course by Charles Nix for LinkedIn Learning. You might be able to access LinkedIn Learning for free via your local library.
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Designing italics
A thesis stemming from a five-year study by Victor Gaultney.
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Easy oblique
Glyphs tutorial by Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer.
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Italics workflow
A discussion on TypeDrawers.
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Maintaining Contrast and Weight across Upright and Italics
A discussion on TypeDrawers.
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The essential italic
A presentation at ATypI 2017 by Victor Gaultney.
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The italic design process
A presentation at ATypI 2020 by Victor Gaultney.
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Why are italics lighter than their upright counterparts?
A discussion on TypeDrawers.
Cyrillic
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Cyrillic local forms
by Maria Doreuli
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Cyrillic script variations and the importance of localisation
by Krista Radoeva
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Cyrillic's links
a collection of links to many online Cyrillic type samples and inspirations, by Vika and Vita
-
Cyrillicsly
workshops for learning Cyrillic type design
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Extending Cyrillic (and later Latin) character sets
by Thomas Phinney
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How to design Cyrillic letters Њ (Nje), Љ (Lje), Ћ (Tshe), and Ђ (Dje)
An article by Igor Petrovic on localizing your glyphs for Serbian and Macedonian Cyrillic.
-
Some comments regarding Cyrillic glyphs
a lengthy GitHub issues discussion on Cyrillic glyphs in Catharsis Fonts’ open-source typeface Cormorant
-
The relatively easy way to find out the quality of a Cyrillic typeface
by Alexandra Korolkova
Greek
-
Greek type design
by Gerry Leonidas
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Polytonic Greek: a guide for type designers
by Irene Vlachou
Hebrew
-
Some guidelines and recommendations for the design of a Hebrew book typeface
MA dissertation by Adi Stern
Canadian Syllabics
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Lava Syllabics type specimen [PDF]
A well-researched and invaluable look at the process behind designing a Canadian Syllabics typeface, which includes many special features to support a wide range of local preferences for languages that use this script.
Math symbols
-
Fonts for Mathematics
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Math symbols for Latin 1
from Microsoft’s Character design standards
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Mathematical symbols contrasted or not?
discussion on TypeDrawers
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Maths glyphs in a non-maths font?
discussion on TypeDrawers
Box drawing characters
-
boxDrawing.py
Script for generating box drawing characters and block elements
OpenType feature programming
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Fonts and Layout for Global Scripts
An introduction to Unicode, the OpenType font format, and OpenType feature programming, by Simon Cozens.
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OpenType Feature File specification
Technical specification for the OpenType programming language.
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The OpenType Cookbook
Learn to code your own OpenType features with Tal Leming.
Language support
Determining the true language support of a font is a complex problem that has not yet been completely solved. Most of these tools will simply report which languages a font seems to support, based solely on its character set, but some tools like Hyperglot and Shaperglot will also check OpenType features for some languages that require the use of them.
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CharSet Checker
and CharSet Builder by Alphabet Type
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FontDrop
-
Hyperglot
by Rosetta Type. This is by far the most well-researched tool for checking language support. Hyperglot is available as a command line tool and a web interface. The command-line tool also checks OpenType support for some languages that require the use of OpenType features.
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Pyfontaine
by Google Fonts
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Shaperglot
A Python library by Simon Cozens for testing a font’s language support. It also checks the behaviour of a font’s OpenType features in order to confirm support for languages that require the use of OpenType features.
-
Validate
by Underware
-
Wakamai Fondue
Standardized character sets
-
Adobe Latin Character Sets
-
Google Fonts Glyph Sets
-
Koeberlin Latin Character Sets
-
Underware Latin Plus
Latin character set by Underware that offers decent language support with a relatively small character set.
Encoding borders and ornaments
-
'ornm' feature
Microsoft OpenType spec
-
Border Ornaments and their implementation: questions & answers.
discussion on TypeDrawers
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Ornaments and Unicode
discussion on TypeDrawers
Python and coding
Learn Python with DrawBot
DrawBot is a free macOS app that allows you to draw graphics and typography with Python. It’s one of the best ways for a type designer or graphic designer to start learning Python.
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Animation tutorial screencast
by Just van Rossum
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DrawBot: Drawing with Python
by David Jonathan Ross (workshop recording)
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Getting Started with DrawBot
tutorial by Andy Clymer
-
Getting started with parametric design in DrawBot
3-part tutorial series by Stephen Nixon
-
Python for Designers
tutorial series by Roberto Arista
-
Python for Visual Designers
Type@Cooper course with David Jonathan Ross
Python scripting in Glyphs
Learn from Glyphs’ official tutorials, and from open-source scripts developed by other type designers.
-
Glyphs 3 Python API
documentation
-
Glyphs scripts
by Rainer Scheichelbauer (aka mekkablue) of the Glyphs team. This repo contains many useful tools and code examples to help you write your own scripts.
There are many more repos of Glyphs scripts by type designers and developers:
-
Python Scripting for Type Design
A workshop by Peter Nowell for type designers working in Glyphs or RoboFont with little to no coding experience.
-
Scripting Glyphs
official tutorials from Glyphs
Python scripting and extensions in RoboFont
Learn from RoboFont’s official tutorials, and from open-source scripts developed by other type designers.
-
Python Scripting for Type Design
A workshop by Peter Nowell for type designers working in Glyphs or RoboFont with little to no coding experience.
-
RoboFont community Discord channel
-
RoboFont documentation
-
RoboFont mechanic
Extension manager for RoboFont
-
RoboFont Script Database
Spreadsheet by Ryan Bugden of useful extensions not in Mechanic.
Git and version control
-
Git for Type Designers
by Frank Grießhammer
Hinting
-
How to hint variable fonts
by Michael Duggan
Kerning tools
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BubbleKern
by Toshi Omagari
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Hands, Face, Space!
by Simon Cozens
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HTLetterspacer
by Huerta Tipográfica
-
Kern On
by Tim Ahrens
-
Kern-a-lytics
by Frank Grießhammer [live demo @ Robothon 2018]
-
kerncritic
by Simon Cozens
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MetricsMachine
by Tal Leming
Proofing tools
Font proofing software
-
drawBotProofing
A set of scripts for generating PDF proofs from a fonts or UFOs, by Frank Grießhammer.
-
Font Goggles
by Just van Rossum, a macOS desktop font viewer for testing fonts, specifically text shaping and variation behavior.
-
Font Proofer
A commercial app for proofing fonts, by Peter Nowell. Integrates with Glyphs and RoboFont, allowing you to re-generate proofs anytime with a single click.
Printer recommendations
Discussions by type designers on printers they use for proofing type.
Web-based proofing and testing
There are a wide range of browser-based tools that you can drop your work-in-progress font into to test it. Most of these tools process your font using a client-side library like OpenType.js, which means your font is not uploaded to any server.
-
Axis Praxis
A playground for testing variable fonts. Made by Laurence Penney.
-
Bulletproof Font Tester
by Adam Jagosz
-
Coverslip
by Simon Cozens
-
Crowbar
-
Dinamo Font Gauntlet
A tool for proofing and animating variable fonts.
-
Font Tester
A modified version, by Mota Italic, of Pablo Impallari’s Font Testing Page. See also the Devanagari and Hebrew versions.
-
FontDrop
by Viktor and Clemens Nübel
-
Galvanized Jets
by Samarskaya & Partners
-
Samsa Variable Font Inspector
by Laurence Penney
-
Stack & Justify
Stack & Justify is a tool to help create type specimens by finding words or phrases of the same width. Inspired by Mass-Driver’s Waterfall tool.
-
The Font Testing Page
by Pablo Impallari
-
TN Type Tools
A set of layout tools for experimenting with variable fonts in various ways. By Type Network.
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Validate
by Underware
-
Variable Font Playground
-
Wakamai Fondue
by Roel Nieskens
-
Waterfall
A tool by Mass-Driver that generates words of equal length after you drop in a font. Great for proofing in early stages of a font, when you’re still seeing how the forms interact with each other.
Proofing texts
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adhesiontext
by Miguel Sousa
-
Hoefler&Co Universal proofing text
by Jonathan Hoefler
-
Just Another Test Text Generator
by Tim Ahrens
-
Vietnamese and Pinyin proofing text
discussion on TypeDrawers
-
Wordtips Word Finder
Handy tool for finding words that contain certain letter combinations, to help you build proofing texts for kerning and ligatures.
Font engineering
Font engineering is the technical side of making font files that work as intended on a wide range of systems.
What is font engineering?
-
Font Engineering
An overview of Alphabet Type’s font engineering workflow, including links to more resources on each topic.
-
Font engineering and the importance of what you can't see.
by Tom Rickner
-
Font Engineering resources needed
Discussion on TypeDrawers
-
Font Engineering with Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer
A course from ILT Academy that will introduce you to font engineering.
-
Font Engineering: Defining a Profession
A presentation by Rosalie Wagner for ATypI 2022 Tech Talks
-
Fonts and Layout for Global Scripts
A free book about font design, Unicode and the computer processing of complex text, by Simon Cozens.
-
Make Your Fonts Work in…
A presentation on font engineering by Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer of Glyphs, at ATypI Tech Talks 2022.
-
Practical Font Engineering with Elí Castellanos
A course from Tipastype
-
The Raster Tragedy at Low-Resolution Revisited
An essay on the problems of rendering text on-screen, with a focus on hinting. Updated several times since it was originally presented in 1997, this essay is considered required reading by many accomplished type designers.
Tools for font engineering
-
DTL OTMaster
A dedicated app for font engineering that allows you to perform a wide range of proof tests, QA checks, and edits to your font files.
-
Font engineering tools
A collection of font engineering utilities by Simon Cozens
-
Fontbakery
A quality-assurance tool for fonts, developed by Google but used by many foundries. Primarily a command-line tool, a web interface was recently added.
-
FontTableViewer
A simple app to view and compare the OpenType tables inside of your font files.
-
fontTools (& ttx)
An indispensible toolkit for editing fonts via Python. Also includes ttx, a command line tool that quickly converts binary font files to human-readable XML, which can also be edited and converted back to binary.
-
Microsoft Typography Docs
A collection of resources for font engineering, including the OpenType specification, and various other articles and tools.
-
VerticalMetricsTools
Managing vertical metrics is one of the most common font engineering problems. This set of Python tools includes a command line tool which generates a PDF to preview the vertical metrics of a font.
Type specimens
Type specimens are the original marketing tool for type foundries, going back hundreds of years. Today, many type foundries still design a PDF specimen (and sometimes printed copies) for each typeface release, to complement the web specimen.
See also: Web specimen tools
-
DeliverGlyphs in InDesign
by Jean loup Fusz, InDesign script to list all glyphs in a font (site in French)
-
Specimen Builder
by Mark Boulton
-
SpecimenDropper
by Alphabet Type
-
Text Fitting in InDesign
by In-Tools
-
Type Specimens
A research project by Mark Boulton about type specimens.
Historic type specimens
-
Mad, Bad (but Good to Know): A survey of type specimens offline and online
by Paul Shaw
-
Online Archive of Type Specimens
by Letterform Archive
-
Resources on the history of type specimens
Twitter thread by Hoefler&Co, a list of books
-
Specimen Books of Metal & Wood Type
A directory by Typographica of type foundry catalogs available online
Naming your font
-
Typeface name check
Use this tool by Lars Schwarz to check if your font name might already be taken.
-
WoLiBaFoNaGen
WordListBasedFontNameGenerator, an app by Jens Kutilek.
- macOS
- Windows
Open-source your fonts
-
Google Fonts
Used by millions of websites, it’s the world’s largest repository of high-quality open-source fonts. Google Fonts has also funded the development of many open-source fonts.
-
SIL Open Font License
The most common open-source license used for fonts. Required if you want to add your fonts to the Google Fonts library.
Open source type foundries
Foundries that primarily release open-source fonts
-
Collletttivo
-
The League of Moveable Type
The O.G. of open-source foundries
-
Tunera
-
Velvetyne
Selling your fonts
Marketplaces & distributors
-
Adobe Fonts
Anyone with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription can use your fonts, and you get paid based on usage.
-
Creative Market
A marketplace for all types of creative assets, including fonts. Seems to be geared more toward hobbyists and freelancers rather than companies. Royalty rate 50%.
-
Fontspring
Formerly known as the world’s largest independent font marketplace, Fontspring is now owned by Creative Market, and has since reduced royalty rates from 70% to 50%.
-
Fontstand
Font rentals distributor. 50% royalty rate.
-
I Love Typography
A new distributor with a large roster of some of the best indie type foundries.
-
Monotype
Sell your fonts through MyFonts, FontShop, Linotype.com, Fonts.com, etc. Royalty rate 50%.
-
Type Network
A network that distributes for many of the world’s best type designers.
-
YouWorkForThem
Opened in 2001, it’s one of the longest-running marketplaces for fonts and stock assets.
Learn about licensing
-
15 Things I Learned from Joyce Ketterer about EULAs
by Alex John Lucas
-
Exploring End User Licensing Agreements
by Alex John Lucas
-
Three Ways to Improve Your EULA
Thomas Jockin interviews Joyce Ketterer for TypeThursday
-
Type Right
-
Why Addenda?
ATypI presentation by Joyce Ketterer, Font Licensing Expert
-
Why don’t EULA’ve me?
ATypI presentation by Joyce Ketterer, Font Licensing Expert
-
XYZ Type – Foundry Documents
A collection of documents (EULA and business documents) from XYZ Type, provided under Creative Commons CC0 license.
Criticising the status quo
-
A rant on web font licenses
Blog post by web developer Manuel Moreale. It’s a good summary of how some web developers feel about web font licenses, but far more interesting is the comments thread on HackerNews.
-
Developers, IT, and tech people criticising font licenses
Comments on HackerNews
-
Font licensing is ill, please help heal it
by Alina Sava
-
Licenses to Heal
by Frank Adebiaye
Innovative licensing: pricing based on company size
Innovative licensing: all-in-one licenses
Desktop/web/ebook/app combined into a single license.
-
Alanna Munro
-
DJR
-
Fontwerk
-
New Glyph
-
Swiss Typefaces
probably one of the first to do this?
-
Tiny Type Co
License enforcement
-
FontRadar
Crawls the web to help you find and correct authorized and unauthorized usage of your fonts.
Starting a foundry
Thinking about starting a foundry, or setting up a website to support your shop? Here are some tools that might come in handy.
Running a type foundry
-
2022 Annual Report & Almanac
Statistics, facts and data from 2022 in the world of independent type foundries, by Proof&Co.
-
Is it realistic to want to start up a type foundry?
A Quora post with answers from several well-known type designers and foundry owners.
-
Ohno Radio
A podcast hosted by James Edmondson, where he chats with type designers and often discusses what it’s like to run a foundry.
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Starting a type foundry 101: a checklist
A presentation at ATypI 2016 by Jean-Baptiste Levée.
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Starting Your Own Type Foundry
Ulrik Hogrebe (TypeThursday) talks with Jesse Ragan and Ben Kiel about starting their new type foundry.
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Taking Your Fonts to Market: Foundry, Reseller, or Go Solo?
by Stephen Coles for Typographica.
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The Autobiography of an Independent Type Foundry
Presentation by James Edmondson of OHno Type Co at Adobe Max 2022.
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Type Foundries Today
A 2013 census and report on the state of type foundries, published by Typographica.
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Type Foundry Survey
Dinamo talks with 15 type foundry owners in 2022.
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Why did I start a type foundry?
by Christian Schwartz
Type foundry directories
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Type Foundries Archive (offline)
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Type Foundry Directory
by Matthew Smith (also available as a spreadsheet)
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Type Foundry Index
E-commerce platforms
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Discussion on e-commerce platforms for type foundries
TypeDrawers
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Fontdue
Developed by Tom Conroy and currently used by many type foundries.
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FoundryCore
Developed by Guido Ferreyra and is currently used by foundries like Blackletra Type Foundry, Blaze Type, and Undercase Type.
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Gumroad
A large e-commerce platform for creatives to sell digital products. Used by Delve Fonts, Cinetype, Justin Penner, Nuform.
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Lttr Shop
Developed by Filip Paldia and currently used by foundries like DizajnDesign and Setup Type.
Website platforms
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Craft CMS
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ProcessWire
Used by Velvetyne
Web specimen tools
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BigText
by Zach Leatherman
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fit-to-width.js
by Laurence Penney
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FitText
by Paravel
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Font Face Observer
by Bram Stein
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Font Testing Page
by Pablo Impallari
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Font-To-Width
by Nick Sherman and Chris Lewis
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slabText
by Brian McAllister
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specimenTools
by Lasse Fister
Font tools for web development
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FontFreeze
A JavaScript tool by Mu-Tsun Tsai for freezing OpenType features into a font file. Runs entirely in the user’s browser without uploading font files to a server. This is accomplished by running fontTools in the user’s browser via Pyodide, a Python distribution built in WebAssembly.
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fontkit
A JavaScript library by Devon Govett for parsing fonts. Supports a wide range of font formats and OpenType features. Does not support variable fonts.
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lib-font
A JavaScript library by Pomax for inspecting fonts. Supports a wide range of font formats.
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opentype (discontinued)
A JavaScript library by Bram Stein for parsing fonts.
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OpenType.js
A popular JavaScript library by Frederik De Bleser for parsing glyph outlines from font binaries. Note that it does not support the complete range of OpenType tables and formats that its name would suggest.
Type testers
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Flont
by Chris Lewis
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Fontsampler
by Johannes Neumeier
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TDF Type Tester
by Quinn Keaveney
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Type Neighbor
by Jon Young
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Typeshow
by Frank Rausch
Custom foundry site design and/or development
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Ashler Design
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Chris Lewis
Clients include I Love Typography, DJR, Positype, Laura Worthington.
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Friends of The Web
Clients include Frere-Jones Type, Kilotype
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Hambly Freeman
Clients include CoType Foundry.
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Humans & Machines
The complexity-loving, beautiful minds behind Dinamo’s website.
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Kenneth Ormandy
Clients include I Love Typography, Alanna Munro.
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Studio Lindeman
Clients include I Love Typography, A2-Type.
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Village One
See also…
More lists of type design resources.
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Awesome Typography
by Joël Galeran (an extensive list of digital font tools and technology)
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Font-Utilities
by Roel Nieskens
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Mota Italic's Type Design Resources
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Tools for font designers
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Type links by Rosalie Wagner
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Velvetyne's Tools & Resources
A list of type design resources and open-source type foundries.