Font Design Getting Started With Glyphs 3 and Type Design

Learn how to create your very own font using Glyphs 3.

If you're new to font design and would like to make your own fonts, join me as we learn how to design and build a professional typeface In this intro to type design with Glyphs 3. 

In this class, we will break the process down into manageable sections; from setting up your Glyphs file to drawing letters, and making reusable components, through to spacing, kerning and finally exporting your font.

Who this course is for

If you are new to Glyphs 3, this class is for you. You will be guided from having never opened Glyphs 3 to designing and exporting your first working font. Some prior knowledge of creating vector shapes in Adobe Illustrator or similar will be an advantage but not absolutely necessary. 

Course Outline

• Introduction
• The Project - To design and build your own font. Using your font design a typographic poster.
• Sketching and Inspiration - Gather inspiration for your new font and make some sketches. This will give you a good idea of how your font will look and how the letters might be made.
• Setting Up Our Glyphs File - We will run through how to set up the glyphs file ready to start drawing letters.
• Drawing Square Glyphs - Letter shapes are categorized into shapes. We start with square shapes.
• Drawing Round Glyphs - Next, we draw the round letters.
• Drawing Triangle Glyphs - The Triangle letters follow.
• Drawing Hybrid Glyphs - Using sections from the; square, round and triangle letter
• Drawing The S - Let's tackle the S, it looks more complicated than it is.
• Spacing and Kerning - Our final stages, spacing and kerning will establish the flow of our font. 
• Testing and Exporting Your New Font - Testing, testing, testing! Use your font. Any strange spacing, crashing glyphs and odd shapes will stand out. You will find that as you test you will refine your font shapes and spacing to make it a beautiful and well-balanced font.

You will need:

• Glyphs 3 (not Glyphs Mini) installed on your Mac. A 30-day trial is available from the Glyphs website. 
• Sketch pad and pencil. Great for notes and sketching letterform ideas.
• Graphics software - My preferred is Adobe Illustrator.
• FontBase (free version) - This is a great font manager and helps us to test our font with Adobe apps.