Create Your Own Font and Present Content With It

This instruction tells you how to create your own English font using an online service "Calligraphr".

By the end of this instructable, individuals should be able to:

• Draw the template downloaded from "Calligraphr"
• Build a font using "Calligraphr"
• Install the font successfully on their computer,
• Present content with it, no matter what software they are using.

Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy:

Core Disciplinary Standards:

Standard 7 - Design in Technology and Engineering Education

There are many approaches to drawing the font, improving the quality of the font, and presenting the font. Students at this level should determine the best approach by evaluating the purpose of the design. So they will need to optimize designs through critical evaluation of design decisions based on provided parameters. In the tutorial, there are some helpful approaches for students to better create a font, student at this level should implement the best possible solution to a design. Through this activity, students can fully practice their design techniques on a single-page sheet with proper guidance and opportunities for fault-tolerant to improve the quality of their designs.

Standard 8: Applying, Maintaining, and Assessing Technological Products and Systems:

If students encounter difficulties in the appearance of the font, improvement in clearness and cleanness would be necessary. Students at this level should apply appropriate methods to diagnose, adjust, and repair systems to ensure precise, safe, and proper functionality. They will also need to synthesize data and analyze trends to make decisions about technological products, systems, or processes to improve the adaptability of their fonts under different environments of operating systems and software. Through this activity, students can apply their design to their daily use. They will also learn the basic process of font management on their computer.

Practices:

Creativity (TEP-2)

With this tutorial, an individual can design and build a font for themselves.

Making and Doing (TEP-3)

In this tutorial, the hands-on activity allows you to design and build an end product that shows your creative work.

Communication (TEP-7)

This tutorial allows you to create a font that will assist you in communicating the characteristics of your work.

Contexts:

Information and Communication (TEC-5)

Design is used to communicate and it is often influenced by its target audience and its message. In this activity, the design of the font creatively and strongly delivers the most proper methods to communicate and advertise one's idea.

Target Audience:

Student Grade 9 - 12, and/or

People who are interested in creating their own fonts.

The software and website we used in this tutorial are free.

A computer running Windows / Linux / Macintosh

Choose one from the three below:

• iPad or other tablets with their stylus
• interactive pen displays products like Wacom devices (From USD 1,499.95 to 3,499.95)
• A computer with a mouse

Access to the internet.

This tutorial uses an iPad and an Apple Pencil to help create a font. If you do not have an iPad and Apple Pencil, you can use alternative software mentioned in Step 3! If you have further questions about software you can use, feel free to ask me in comment!

Open https://www.calligraphr.com/en/accounts/register/ in your browser, and create an account.

You will need to activate your account following the instructions you received in your email. Once you activated your account, you can start creating your font!

1. Click on Templates on the top menu,
2. Click on Minimal English on the sidebar,
3. Click on Download Template
4. Choose PDF for better resolution, and check "Characters as background" to help draw.
5. You can leave the size of template cells as default, and you can adjust based on your own needs.
6. Then you can download it!

Click on the link to download your device, and send it to other devices/applications to draw.

You can use Microsoft Paint, Paint 3D, Photoshop, GIMP, Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, Coral Draw, or another software on Windows

Or use Preview, Photoshop, GIMP, Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, or Coral Draw on Mac.

Or use Notes, Notability, or GoodNotes on iPad.

Or any other software that allows you to edit / draw using a stylus or mouse.

Take Notability for example:

Send your template file to Notability via AirDrop, or in other ways to send your template in the Files application. Open the file in Notability.

You can start drawing each character within the labeled boxes. Try to keep each character the same size and in the center of boxes.

After finish drawing, you can export the document:

Choose format as Image.

Image type: PNG

Page Range: 1 of 8 (the first page)

Unselect Paper

Unselect Page Margin

Click on "Share Note" and send it to the computer. After you send the image, you are halfway through the process!

If you are using software other than Notability, remember to export the first page in image format. As long as your export satisfies the two requirements, you're good to go.

Open https://www.calligraphr.com/en/webapp/app_home/?/fonts and upload the template file you just made.

After uploading, the website will prompt that they found 60 glyphs, and you can click on "Add characters to your font" at the bottom of the pop-up window.

Replace "MyFont" with whatever you want to name your font.

The name you typed here will be the name that shows up when you use the font in places like Microsoft Word and/or Preview.

Download both files and open them.

The installation process will be prompted by your font management application automatically.

Click on Install Font, you will see the new font once finish installing.

Choose the newly installed font and start typing. If you cannot find the font, restart the software.

After you typed content in Microsoft Word, you can adjust the font size and margins to make it look nice. If you are not satisfied with one or more single characters, update the font by redoing it from Step 6.

If you are very satisfied with the output, you can now print it out.

Feel free to share your font below! 🤩 I'm looking forward to seeing it.