Leslie Cabarga: Learn FontLab Fast

“Learn FontLab Fast” by Leslie Cabarga is a simplified guide to creating fonts using the Fontlab Ltd. series of applications including TypeTool 2, FontLab 4.6, FontLab Studio 5, ScanFont and AsiaFont Studio. On 160 picture-packed pages in 8.5 x 11 format, he goes through the process of font creation from concept to installation. The book explains drawing and editing glyphs, metrics and kerning. There is information about OpenType, encoding and other mysteries of the font header, contributed by the book’s technical editor Adam Twardoch.

The book has been written to enable users to dramatically cut down the learning curve required to master FontLab and its sister programs, TypeTool and AsiaFont Studio. Author and designer Leslie Cabarga (who also wrote The Logo Font & Lettering Bible) packed Learn FontLab Fast with illustrations, diagrams and screenshots, and cut the text to a minimum so learning to create fonts that you can load onto your own computer and/or distribute commercially becomes easy and enjoyable.

Learn FontLab Fast explains the techniques used by five established font designers to create their own fonts. The book will tell you everything you need to know to: begin using the program; to open existing fonts and create new ones; to scan your sketches and add them as backgrounds; to paste drawings into FontLab from Adobe Illustrator; to understanding and using the brush and pen tools to draw glyph characters; to correctly setting up parameters in the Font Info window so your fonts will perform correctly on any computer; to making Type 1, TrueType and OpenType fonts; to spacing, kerning and hinting fonts; to adding accented characters; to using components and anchors; to setting up font families; to making OpenType fonts with special features and organizing those features into classes. The book also features an extensive, cross-referenced “find-anything” Index.

Beginners will appreciate the logical structure and detailed illustrations. Experienced users will learn new tips and tricks. Everything you need to know about creating a font is packed into this volume. To get your copy (only US$25.95) just follow the link to the Leslie Cabarga website.

Leslie Cabarga: Learn FontLab Fast
Iconoclassics, July 2004, Second Edition, July 2007
ISBN 0965762858
http://www.logofontandlettering.com/

About the Author

Leslie Cabarga is an illustrator, designer and font designer who has authored over two-dozen books on graphic design. His illustration has appeared on the covers of such magazines as Time, Fortune, Newsweek, National Lampoon, and Los Angeles. He has created over 40 fonts including Magneto Bold, Streamline, Rocket, BadTyp and the Kobalt Family. Leslie's previous book, “Logo, Font & Lettering Bible,” has received high-praise from many respected typographers and designers such as Matthew Carter, Roger Black, Rian Hughes, Jim Parkinson, Daniel Pelavin, Jill Bell, Alan Haley, Dirk Uhlenbrock, Hrant Papazian, Filip Blazek and Thomas Phinney. Where the Logo, Font & Lettering Bible teaches how to draw letters and comprehend all the rules of letterform design, Learn FontLab Fast goes the next step in teaching how to actually take those letters and make them into fonts.

Leslie figured he was the perfect guy to write Learn FontLab Fast, since he didn't know beans about the program. “I figured that I was the average designer trying to learn FontLab who didn’t want to have to wade through the densely-written 700-page program manual,” Leslie says. “So every time I felt confused, I got my answers directly from the creators of FontLab and then I made it my business to explain the procedures I was learning in simple terms, and with plenty of pictures, to make the kind of manual I wanted to read myself.”