Comments on: I had always wanted to do this

I had always wanted to do this

Rinku — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:26:48 -0800

Make your handwriting into a font with Yourfonts. Download the PDF, draw your alphabet, scan and upload, then download the finished result. Examples. Via Drawn!

By: backseatpilot

backseatpilot — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:37:03 -0800

But I type so that people don't have to decipher my handwriting...

By: DU

DU — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:43:46 -0800

I've always wanted to do this too, but only for my wife. I can't even read my own writing, let alone do I want to inflict it on others. That said, if they have some magical system that makes fonts work on Linux without heartache...wow.

By: pointilist

pointilist — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:51:17 -0800

This looks like fun.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:04:48 -0800

This is effing awesome. I remember seeing ads for exactly this in the backs of computer magazines about fifteen years ago, but it cost a dumb amount of money. Now it's free! Hooray!

By: If only I had a penguin...

If only I had a penguin... — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:11:45 -0800

Ok, now how do I send all my gmail in my own font. Seriously, is this possible? I assume I'd have to embed the font in the email somehow, or....? Do I need a firefox plugin? This is awesome.

By: lowlife

lowlife — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:15:24 -0800

<paranoid>I'd question putting my signature in there, but apart from that it's very cool.</paranoid>

By: revmitcz

revmitcz — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:18:09 -0800

Ok, now how do I send all my gmail in my own font. Seriously, is this possible? I assume I'd have to embed the font in the email somehow, or....? Do I need a firefox plugin? Unless you're attaching a .gif/.png of your email written out in Photoshop/GIMP/etc with that font, there isn't really a way to do that (yet) Technically, there's support in some modern browsers for font embedding (using @font-face), but I don't believe there is as-yet a plugin for GMail to use that support. Then, of course, you'd have to hope someone was reading your email in a browser capable of supporting @font-face, because I don't think there's any actual email clients that will do so. Sorry.

By: filthy light thief

filthy light thief — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:19:08 -0800

If only I had a penguin... - you can copy + paste any text into rich text messages, but I don't know if you really want to hassle with embedding fonts into an email. You might be better off making a PDF, if you really want to share your new font with everyone. Plus, there's legibility issues. Simple fonts are the easiest to convey messages. Remember when all Quake-related websites used the Quake font? That got old pretty quickly. lowlife - Yeah, I gotta wonder if they pick their favorite new fonts and use them, or alter them and label the fonts as their own.

By: If only I had a penguin...

If only I had a penguin... — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:23:32 -0800

"Remember when all Quake-related websites used the Quake font? That got old pretty quickly. " I don't remember this. However, if it was unclear, my intent actually was to annoy everyone I know by using my font in my email, so I would consider this evidence of a feature, not a bug. Ah well, baby steps (towards my grand goal of costing my friends their sanity). My font will be ready in 24 minutes (no signature). It is copyright to me, though I suppose there's no guarantee they won't alter things slightly and steal them. Somehow, I'm not worried.

By: artifarce

artifarce — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:37:57 -0800

I'm not only going to make my own font, I'm going to have my kids make a cute, still learning how to write, kind of font.

By: cmoj

cmoj — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:58:44 -0800

Damn it! I just did this the hard way! And it's hard, too!

By: If only I had a penguin...

If only I had a penguin... — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:08:42 -0800

Alright, I have my font. Some thoughts.. 1) I filled in the template quickly because I wanted to capture my letters as I actually make them, not as I'd make them if I stopped to think. The problem with this is that I didn't always centre them well or get them to sit right on the anchor notches. This really shows once I start typing things in my font. The kerning and vertical alignment are completely messed up. I will do it again more carefully when the server isn't so busy. 2) When I type in my new font, it underlines some of the punctuation marks, some of the time. Some commas and some periods, but not every comma or every period. I have no idea why this is.

By: Typographica

Typographica — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:10:00 -0800

If you're dissatisfied with the results, you can get a truly professional font (at a professional price) with HandFont.

By: neblina_matinal

neblina_matinal — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:45:12 -0800

This is so cool. And free! I'm thinking I'll pencil in guides, and then erase them after I've inked in the letters. That should help in making everything leveled.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:08:10 -0800

how do i make my computer scan hope pls

By: caution live frogs

caution live frogs — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:27:44 -0800

I have had a dream for a while now of making a font out of my mom's handwriting. She had really neat printing, and if I can find enough examples of her writing I would still love to do this. Biggest problem I can see is getting it on the template - I think I'd have to scan in pages, cut out letters like I'm making a ransom note, then re-trace the letters in Illustrator and add them to the template there so I can scale them correctly. My own chicken-scratch writing would likely be too illegible to use...

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:38:57 -0800

Aha! Finally, unbreakable encryption! It'd be cool to read MeFi in author's own handwriting. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I suppose, depending on your POV), my voice would be effectively silenced by the unmitigated horribleness of my handwriting.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:52:12 -0800

Pretty psyched to give this a shot and get sort of the best of both worlds for lettering my comic. Rad.

By: roomthreeseventeen

roomthreeseventeen — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:01:03 -0800

This is beautiful. Thanks.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:50:20 -0800

Huh. Interesting object lesson. Making the font was really, really easy. But the end result really drove home to me that not all handwriting fonts are created equal. I popped open my most recent comic and changed all the text over to my new font; the results are, um, distinctive: Original lettering (anime ace) New font lettering I might try again later, taking a little more care with the template (and using a thicker pen). Even if I never end up using it for this strip, it's a cool toy.

By: dagosto

dagosto — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:17:11 -0800

As of the time of this comment it seems their processing queue is overwhelmed. I'll just have to wait. I'll need to read your comic later COBRA! but I think the new lettering looks pretty excellent.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:53:33 -0800

Thanks... I still don't think this batch turned out great, but it seems like another attempt might kick out a version I'd like a lot. I noticed an errant dot in the "F" box of my template made its way into the font, causing spacing weirdness.

By: If only I had a penguin...

If only I had a penguin... — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:15:43 -0800

I've done so more playing. First, I drew guidelines across the baseline notches in pencil, and also down the middle of each box. I did not have a thicker black pen, but that would have helped too. After drawing the letters in pencil, going over in pen and erasing all the pencil (guidelines and original letters), I scanned in colour. Then I opened the file in photoshop and went in and deleted all the little spots/dots/artifacts and painted in a little more black where the pen thinned a bit. This produced a much better font, but I still had underlining in some letters, and the spacing and vertical alignment are still a little wonky. I went in and downloaded the free font editing tool on the site (the demo version is free) and have been editing with that. It's time consuming, especially for a person who doesn't know much about fonts, but I can delete all the underlines (it seems to be including in the letter some of the table) and fix the spacing around each letter. Basically, I'm typing all sorts of things and looking at the samples to see which letters need to be fixed and fixing them. It's not difficult, but i takes some time. Pretty good for free, I would say.

By: scruss

scruss — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:41:22 -0800

Nice. Mine came out okay, despite some baseline wibbles. You can correct that with the free FontForge (which, although is nominally cross-platform, is a fierce install on anything but Linux).

By: seagull.apollo

seagull.apollo — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:34:03 -0800

The best thing about this post is that just the other night I was talking to a girl about making her handwriting into a font. Hello, new friend!

By: AndrewStephens

AndrewStephens — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:47:24 -0800

I used an earlier for-pay ($9 or something) site to create a handwriting font for my blog (it only works in Safari and Firefox3.1beta). This looks even better. FontForge is a great help in cleaning things up, particularly the kerning, I recommend using autokern if you do nothing else. The other problem is that everyone hates my handwriting, FontForge won't fix that.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:40:50 -0800

My second attempt to make a font turned out pretty weird. I was slower and more deliberate, and the end result looks kind of like the shitty lettering in the old Charlton comics. I think I like my first attempt better, even if it looks kind of insane.

By: dirtynumbangelboy

dirtynumbangelboy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:10:41 -0800

I want to try this. But I can see one issue.. if you're doing a scripty font, it would be nice to have a dozen or so minor variations on (at least) the capital letters. Just throw 'em in randomly.

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 01:55:28 -0800

DAMN WOOHOO HECK YES Ok now I'm getting creeped out a little

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 02:15:32 -0800

Protip: After you get your font back from the site, do yourself a favor and download the free trial of FontCreator they advertise at the end. It's got an auto-kerning tool that vastly improves the realism of the font -- by using that and doing a little tweaking, my font went from a wide-spaced Comic Sans knockoff to a photocopy of my handwriting. Sadly, I can't seem to get Windows XP to implement kerning anywhere other than Microsoft Word. Does anybody know how to make it work system-wide?

By: cmoj

cmoj — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:59:36 -0800

im in ur fontz analyzin ur handwritings