FontStruct: Build Your Own Fonts
Well, this looks like fun. FontStruct is a web-based app for creating and sharing new fonts, built by FontShop. A lot of picture and display fonts, but this looks like a great way to get the elements of typeface construction under your belt, and a neat place to snag some Creative Commons fonts.
I teach a print design course in the fall, and I’m seriously considering making all my students sign up and try their hand at a little font design. Should drive home a couple of tough lessons about how complex and subtle fonts really are.
The only downside I see is that they intersperse their own ads for FontShop typefaces in with their gallery of user-created fonts. Advertise yourselves, by all means, but don’t be sneaky.
I wonder what Hoefler and Frere-Jones think about this.
Fri., May. 9, 2008
Reader Comments (5)
Hi! So glad you enjoy FontStruct! This major project requires funding, so making decisions on advertising was a necessary struggle for us. I wonder if you can elaborate on what you felt was sneaky? We tried to keep the FontShop fonts at the bottom of each page with a FontShop logo and text that identifies it as a design created outside FontStruct. We're open to your ideas.
I think it was their placement in the queue of ostensibly user-created fonts that stood out to me. "Sneaky" may have been overstating my unease. If anything, I liked the FontShop typefaces and thought "Wow, this software must be awesome if people can make things like that," only to find out that they're not "FontStructed." The effect seemed intentional.
Really cool idea, and I'm already planning some syllabus space around it. It's hard to get students, who are used to running through the font pallets in Word and InDesign to stop and consider the intricacies of the fonts they're using, or to understand the time and thought that goes into making them.
I'm very pleased to hear you are making this part of your course material. The potential of FontStruct as a teaching tool definitely crossed our minds several times as we were developing it. We'd love to see what you come up with. Will you contact me when it's done?
Sure thing. I'm going to pass this along to some of my colleagues who teach new media/multimedia classes, so you might be hearing from them as well.
very good article