If you have ever wondered how to create a font, you may find the following tutorials useful for getting an idea of how the font creation process works. The majority of tutorials listed feature the free and open source programs inkscape (vector drawing) and fontforge (font editor).
Inkscape and FontForge can be installed on both windows, mac and the linux operating system. The installation procedures for FontForge vary from operating system to operating system. If you are running linux, both FontForge and Inkscape should be available by default in your package manager repositories.
Next, I would like to mention one of my favorite typography blogs El Serif de Chocolate, where I have recently discovered my new love — “Ferrica Light“. You can follow Luis Fernando Carvente on Behance here: http://www.behance.net/carvente and on twitter:
He recently posted this great video called “Talking Type” with Ken Barber of House Industries
House Industries: Interview with Ken Barber from Gestalten on Vimeo.
The following video tutorials vary. Basically it’s just a taste of what can be done with the free software available. The last video uses illustrator and then moves on to display the font table and metrics window for setting the left and right width variants/bearing easily in FontForge.
From what I’ve seen, the newer versions of Inkscape make the font creation a bit easier than Illustrator as there are built in tools that allow the user to keep all of the font resources in one single svg. This svg can be imported into FontForge in one single step.
How to Make a Font with Inkscape | More info on Clever Someday – Make a dingbat font with Inkscape
Inkscape Typography Extensions – After designing glyphs in Inkscape and converting them to the SVGFont format, you can load it in Fontforge. More info in article by Felipe Sanches on understandingfonts.com
Inkscape & Fontforge | Resource Files posted in bottom of video
Setting up your glyph from lace on Vimeo. (Illustrator to Fontforge)Another useful resource link: http://fntsample.sourceforge.net
