Learn FontLab Fast

by Leslie Cabarga

For typographers and designers of fonts, the software program "FontLab" has become the premiere font-creation program of our time. Highly sophisticated, FontLab operates on Windows and Mac (systems 9+ and OSX) and offers more up-to-date features--such as OpenType support, class-based metrics and kerning, as well as an impressive array of bezier drawing tools--than any other font design program. Learn FontLab Fast; A Simplified Guide to Creating Fonts with FontLab, TypeTool, ScanFont and AsiaFont Studio covers versions 4.6 and 5.0 of FontLab. It has been written to enable users to dramatically cut down the learning curve required to master FontLab and its sister programs, TypeTool and AsiaFont Studio. Author and designer Leslie Cabarga (who also wrote The Logo Font & Lettering Bible) packed Learn FontLab Fast with illustrations, diagrams and screenshots, and cut the text to a minimum so learning to create fonts that you can load onto your own computer and/or distribute commercially becomes easy and enjoyable. Learn FontLab Fast explains the techniques used by five established font designers to create their own fonts. The book'll tell you everything you need to know begin using the program; to open existing fonts and create new ones; to scan your sketches and add them as backgrounds; to paste drawings into FontLab from Adobe Illustrator; to understanding and using the brush and pen tools to draw glyph characters; to correctly setting up parameters in the Font Info window so your fonts will perform correctly on any computer; to making Type 1, TrueType and OpenType fonts; to spacing, kerning and hinting fonts; to adding accented characters; to using components and anchors; to setting up font families; to making OpenType fonts with special features and organizing those features into classes. The book also features an extensive, cross-referenced "find-anything" Index. Whether you are a FontLab and TypeTool beginner, or an experienced user, Learn FontLab Fast covers virtually everything you need to know.

Genres: Design

160 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

Zavier Leslie Cabarga, popularly known as Leslie Cabarga, is an American author, illustrator, cartoonist, animator, font designer, and publication designer. A participant in the underground comix movement in the early 1970s, he has since gone on to write and/or edit over 40 books. His art style evokes images from the 1920s and 1930s, and over the years Cabarga has created many products associated with Betty Boop. His book The Fleischer Story in the Golden Age of Animation, originally published in 1976, has become the authoritative history of the Fleischer Studios.