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Part 1 Making your own font

There is a standard way of going about making your own font, and it always involves money. If you know your own way around your computer and the internet, you can build a new font with these tools:

1. A sheet (or many if you are like me) of white gloss bond paper. Does not need cotton rag mixture.
2. a scanner
3. A good quality paint program that allows you to edit the scan.

OK, this is the beginning of the process, because it is a long process, but the ability to express yourself with your own print can help define you as a person, and personalize email to friends, cards and blogs/ web sites.

Print in line fashion this set of letters:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a b c d e f g and so on

All characters to print

I discovered that the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" contains all the letters in the alphabet. I thought it was spurious! You may want to repeat that sentence several times. If you make an error, simply repeat the letters, crossing out the bad ones.

Next, the scan. Scan it as high quality as possible. If you have the ability to adjust your scan with software that came with the scanner, make sure that the contrast between your letters and the paper is as shar4p as possible. I adjusted mine until I got the parchment effect. It was half skill and half good fortune. My scanner came with OK effects and scan transform options.

Save the scan as a bitmap (bmp) or a .jpg. Be careful with bitmaps, because a high quality scan can be a very large file Apple supports these formats as do PCs: .jpg, .bmp, .gif, .tiff

Next time---using your paint program to organize, replace and doctor your scan so it is ready to be made into your personalized font.

Character Mapping

How do I open Character Map?

Mac OS X:

The Character Palette appears in the Input menu. The Input menu looks like a flag in the top-right corner of your Menu Bar. If you don't see the Input menu in the menu bar do next:

    Open System Preferences ? International (like on the picture).

    Click Input Menu, then click the check-boxes next to Character Palette and "Show Input menu in menu bar".

    View picture to see how this is supposed to look like after you're done:

First step choose language

This Mac user Chose Unicode instead of English. Unicode Rocks!

 

Windows XP, Vista and 7:

Open Character Map by clicking:

Start

Then clicking Programs, clicking Accessories, clicking System Tools, and then clicking Character Map. If you want to use it often, just send the link to the Desktop.

Windows adds characters easily

My next post will be more complicated but more rewarding. I will show you how to map your own font, and I will use the example of using your own printing. Everyone has a unique print set, taught (for me) in the 1^st and 2^nd grades. I cut out letters in the first grade and learned to arrange them into words, and next grade did countless practice sheets of the CAPS and lower case characters. Script writing is much easier then printing and I have always wondered why. I may have associated printing with simple things, but I think I like the end result of handwriting.