Your writing can become a font
Whether you're an experienced calligrapher or an inveterate doodler, you can commemorate your personal style in a font all your own. You can try creating a lush italic script, rounded uncials, bold blackletter, or quirky symbols. You can even make a font out of your own handwriting.
Instructions
1. Draw your alphabet. Start with the letters HAMBURGEVONS and adapt them to finish the similar letterforms. For example, "R" can be altered to make "K." Work with pen and paper or draw directly in the font editor. It will be more difficult to create the Bezier curves in the font editing program, but it eliminates some steps.
2. Scan the paper artwork as a high resolution greyscale or bitmap JPEG at 300 dpi using 200% zoom.
3. Import the scans to a paint program such as Photoshop and clean up the letterforms.
4. Import the letters to a draw program such as Illustrator. Vectorize each letter with the trace function.
5. Open font editing software such as Fontlab and create a new font file. Select "Font Info" from the File menu. Fill in the form with information to be embedded in the final font file.
6. Copy and paste each letterform into the font editor letter grid. Adjust each letter's shape and kerning as needed. You will need to experiment as each alphabet requires different spacing between certain letters.
7. Generate or export the font using the command in the file menu and then install the font.
