This looks really nice. The demo seems slick so far, though I've never had any experience with font-design. I've always wanted to mess around with it a little more, but it hasn't been very convenient.
Interested to see what folks have to say who have used professional tooling.
It is mentioned in the App itself, but not in GitHub anywhere. I'm going to look into it and update the license. My intent is that it is totally free / open source - even if i'm fuzzy on the legal mumbo jumbo.
I'm an interaction designer by trade, and learning JavaScript the hard / laborious / crazy / way by creating Glyphr. Nobody said it was pretty under the covers.
Is there a method to import a TTF or OTF font to start from? I've done a lot of work on a personal font I use, but I'd love to see how it plays out in Glyphr. Recreating it from scratch seems like a big ordeal.
This is great, and I love how they got some UI things exactly right, such as zoom with the mouse wheel, and pan with the space bar held down, including visual feedback for the tool switch.
You are amazing, "A designer who teach himself to code by making beautiful and awesome apps" best post of the day. But yeah the code is ... but the UI and the concept itself is beautiful ;). Keep improving and good luck.
If you make this fully featured, this might spawn an entire generation of font designers (for good or bad :)). Also think about people people forking fonts like on github.
It looks like the bits to import/export the fonts in a portable format (json) are already in place. You could literally run a git repo with the font files and serve it up to a web interface. That would be awesome :D
Kind of the main core of Glyphr is to make font design accessible to the masses. How can you know if you are a horrible font designer if you can't even try? :-D
Wow. As an typography enthusiast who's miserable with bezier curves, I've never seen something this straightforward. I love the coordinates it gives you on handles and points. Being able to easily work from metrics forward is a great touch as well.
I gave up on trying to learn with Fontlab's TypeTool because nothing was nearly as clear or usable as this.
This is the perfect entrance to type design, and I see myself wasting a lot of my time with this in the coming weeks.
Nice editor. Though I wonder with all the font links lately, is the world really short on fonts? Shouldn't Google fonts and the like just about cover any need?
Google fonts is incredibly frustrating as soon as you look beyond skin-depth. For one, it's annoying to use Google Fonts for professional work, because more often than not the font you want to use is available in only one weight, or it's missing an italic style, etc. So, you walk in thinking you're going to come out with a terrific type solution for your client or project, and you walk out realizing you are effectively being upsold by a type designer. Not that it's a terrible thing.
Now, let's say you look at the full catalog of commercial fonts. What's happening is a sort of acceleration of fashion. No sooner did the squared serif font come into style than it is on its way out. People are designing new fonts, other people are enjoying the new stuff, and the old stuff gets pushed out (not completely, ever, but enough that your average designer starts to really get annoyed seeing the same old fonts).
So this tool is probably a great thing--it should help boost the industry and it will also put more downforce on the value of the same old junk that has been around forever. So if you are really OK with standard fonts, or plan to use free fonts forever, there should be an increase in the amount of that stuff that is available for you to use.
This should also help commercial fonts take hold. People will start to notice fonts more, and they will start to understand the difference between the amount of work that goes into paid fonts vs. unpaid.
Google Fonts has only single style families on purpose, to prioritize a limited budget, so the most popular single style fonts can be improved into families with confidence there is demand for them.
But expanding single styles into families is not as easy as it should be. That's why I help start http://metapolator.com which takes www.metaflop.com and removes the 'write metafont code' part of the process.
As you say, if you want the fonts to be better sooner than Google, you can pay for it - either by commissioning the designer to improve the open source fonts or by going across the street to a paid web font service.
This looks really nice, but there are a couple things I can't figure out. How do I add new characters? How can I add new glyphs for ligatures? How do I set kerning pairs?
This is without-a-doubt, the most useful and coolest thing I've seen hit the Hacker News homepage this year. Seriously, this is amazing. It works really well and is easy to use as well, you could be onto something here. It's seeing people create things like this that motivate me more than any, "Why you should switch to Google Go" article ever could.
I personally liked when there used to be a barrier to entry for designing (horrible) fonts. Nonetheless, this is quite a feat, wow. There are other contenders too, there is:
http://www.prototypo.io/http://www.metaflop.com/
That's why I help start http://metapolator.com which will become a much more powerful online font editor, because it allows you to design typeface families instead of letters.
Hey dave,
Currently in Prototypo, users design fonts in a visual way only. Using code will come later, when we can make it user-friendly enough and fully integrated in our visual editor.
Anyway, the future looks bright for open-source online type design software. There's a little competition and many possibilities for collaboration. That can only be good!
52 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadInterested to see what folks have to say who have used professional tooling.
Also glad they have the sandboxed online try-out to mess with: http://glyphrstudio.com/sandbox/
Nice work!
This is magic, congrats.
It looks like the bits to import/export the fonts in a portable format (json) are already in place. You could literally run a git repo with the font files and serve it up to a web interface. That would be awesome :D
I gave up on trying to learn with Fontlab's TypeTool because nothing was nearly as clear or usable as this.
This is the perfect entrance to type design, and I see myself wasting a lot of my time with this in the coming weeks.
Now, let's say you look at the full catalog of commercial fonts. What's happening is a sort of acceleration of fashion. No sooner did the squared serif font come into style than it is on its way out. People are designing new fonts, other people are enjoying the new stuff, and the old stuff gets pushed out (not completely, ever, but enough that your average designer starts to really get annoyed seeing the same old fonts).
So this tool is probably a great thing--it should help boost the industry and it will also put more downforce on the value of the same old junk that has been around forever. So if you are really OK with standard fonts, or plan to use free fonts forever, there should be an increase in the amount of that stuff that is available for you to use.
This should also help commercial fonts take hold. People will start to notice fonts more, and they will start to understand the difference between the amount of work that goes into paid fonts vs. unpaid.
Fonts are not a solved problem by a long shot.
But expanding single styles into families is not as easy as it should be. That's why I help start http://metapolator.com which takes www.metaflop.com and removes the 'write metafont code' part of the process.
As you say, if you want the fonts to be better sooner than Google, you can pay for it - either by commissioning the designer to improve the open source fonts or by going across the street to a paid web font service.
Much much better than Beziers for many purposes.
But there is a js version on http://fontly.com/sandbox/spiro.html
In any case, great job by the programmers here.
FontStruct - build a face with pre-defined blocks, uses Flash, proprietary, sponsored by FontShop. 6 years old.
http://fontstruct.com/
typism - development history and novel path drawing, uses SVG+JS, MIT licensed. Fonts are distributed under OFL. 5 years old.
http://typism.appspot.com/
Typism is dead, no one worked on it for ages.
http://prototypo.io is new, active, libre, Angular, on github, but! it suffers from the classic problem of processing and such; designing visual things isnt best done by writing code. Its why metafont didnt catch on - https://www.google.co.in/search?q=why+metafont+didnt+catch+o...
That's why I help start http://metapolator.com which will become a much more powerful online font editor, because it allows you to design typeface families instead of letters.
Anyway, the future looks bright for open-source online type design software. There's a little competition and many possibilities for collaboration. That can only be good!
That said, this is a very cool project.