An affordable font utility that allows users to turn any image such as a scanned signature, a corporate logo or a digital photo into a font that can be easily used in any wordprocessing or graphic application ― all in six easy steps.

You can either add a glyph to an existing font or create a glyph on its own — as a SING glyphlet for Adobe InDesign or as an OpenType fontlet for any other application.

SigMaker 3 highlights

Add a signature, logo or symbol to any existing font

Each computer font consists of graphical characters called glyphs. With SigMaker, you can easily create glyphs on your own, from photos, drawings, scanned signatures or company logos, and add them to any of the OpenType (new in version 3) or TrueType fonts that are installed on your system, at a character slot (keyboard position) of your choice.

Create single-glyph fonts ("fontlets")

Placing a scanned signature or a company logo in a ‘fontlet’ (new in version 3) is an affordable and universal way to include these graphics in documents ― without the fuss of graphic format conversion. Since a ‘fontlet’ is a normal OpenType font, it can be used on both Mac and Windows, in practically every application! Also, keying in a special character is often faster and easier than importing and placing a graphic file, especially if the process needs to be repeated.

Create Adobe InDesign-compatible SING glyphlets

Another exciting new feature of SigMaker 3 is the ability to create SING glyphlets. The SING architecture was developed by Adobe to solve the “gaiji” problem in Chinese, Japanese and Korean typography. In those languages, characters sometimes have graphical variants that represent personal names or places. These variants, called “gaiji” in Japanese, typically are not included in the standard fonts. The SING architecture enables users to extend their Asian fonts with new “glyphlets” ― glyph objects that can be associated with fonts without actually modifying them. SING glyphlets are currently supported in Adobe InDesign CS2 and CS3.

Spice up your presentations and documents with custom symbols

SigMaker also opens possibilities for new kinds of visual communication: adding icons or custom bullet points to your texts can increase the readability, and replacing some common words or proper names with their graphic representation can be a fun factor.

SigMaker

Turn images, logos and signatures into fonts. Version 3.0 for Mac and Windows.

May 2008: SigMaker is now available in English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese!

Six easy steps

Step 1. Select a font to which you would like to add your glyph or that will be used together with your free-standing glyph.

Step 2. Open and image file with your photo, signature or logo. Adjust the image (invert, crop, rotate) until it looks fine.

Step 3. Choose a character position (keystroke combination) for your new glyph.

Step 4. Adjust the dimensions of the image.

Step 5. Set the name of the font.

Step 6. Save the modified font; and you're done.

Tutorials

View the SigMaker 3 video tutorial on Vimeo:

Reviews

The Kleper Report on Digital Publishing , Issue12.6, December 2007. 

BlogCritics Magazine , 1 Nov 2007 

The Kleper Report on Digital Publishing, Issue 10.4 July/August 2005

ZDnet Hotfiles, March 26 1998 online at http://hotfiles.zdnet.com