Practical Font Design

The Revised and Expanded Third Edition

by David Bergsland

Buy the e-book

  Available as an e-book (PDF and ePub formats) download for US$9.99

About the e-book

A rewritten, expanded 3rd edition including the second edition of part one and part two (on building book font families) plus new materials giving a practical walk through the process of designing a font and families using FontLab Studio. This is not about artistic considerations, but the practicalities of putting a font together. On the other hand, the design approach is fine art. David's training is as a fine art printmaker: etchings & stone lithography.

The basic procedure we use for font design is found in this book. It is a step by step following of new font designs with tips and comments along the way.

This is not a book for programmers and scripters. This is a book for graphic designers and typographers who love type and want to make their own fonts—either for themselves or to sell.

In the process of writing this book several things were developed that you might find useful in your design process. In general these are pieces of copy or FontLab files that will save you the time required to make your own. There are lists of composite glyphs to generate, and OpenType features file, and a text file to use when generating metrics and kerning tables. You can find them on this page.

Here's a condensed table of contents for you to see what is in the book:

A practical approach to classifying fonts 9

Type drawing tools 33

The creation of a font 47

Starting to draw 67

Letterspacing 109

Generating fonts for testing 123

Making composite glyphs 127

Adding OpenType Features 133

Kerning your new font 151

Tracing drawings & artwork 163

Designing font families 171

Building the Display version 243

 Richard Fink says:

"If you’re looking for a brief, straightforward introduction to fonts, I recommend David Bergsland’s Practical Font Design. Unlike a lot of books that make you feel like you’re seated in the back row of a crowded lecture hall, this one feels like a private tutorial."

Read his full review here.