HTML5 based Font Designer - Glyphr Studio

[mattlag]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Hey All

I'd like to pass along a little long-term project I'm working on - it's a browser-based font editor. Sound interesting?

I'm labeling it "Beta 2" because it still has a long way to go... but if you are into designing fonts, I'd love to hear any feedback you may have:

Glyphr Studio
www.glyphrstudio.com

Thank you!

::mattlag

[hrant]

I like seeing people making these sorts of efforts* but since a font needs so many parts -and so much extended concentration- to really end up as a usable thing I wonder if this could ever be useful for more than just sketching ideas - which means worrying only about letterforms, not a complete font.

* And we had one like this earlier this year - can anybody find it?

That said, I do hope my hunch is wrong - best of luck with it!

hhp

[oldnick]

Hrant—

I agree, “awesomesauce” notwithstanding…

[mattlag]

I actually agree - there are some huge omissions. I think some of the things i'm going to work on next are kerning and hinting... but from a growth standpoint I do plan on continually adding features. From a bottoms-up perspective, there are only so many aspects or features of a font, and those could translate 1:1 to features in Glyphr. But i'm also really interested in creating features that are useful to designers during the design process. One example of this that made it into the current release is the concept of Seed Shapes... but the thing I like best about this project is that I can do whatever I want - there is potential to add any crazy feature I dream up :-)

So if you have any specific ideas about the current shortfalls - or font design tools in general - I'd love to hear them.

Thanks!

[hrant]

You know, the one thing that's missing from any font editor (in fact any kind of vector drawing tool I know of) is what paper-and-pencil(-and-eraser :-) is great at: fuzziness, ambiguity. To me that's a natural part of making anything - which is why few people can make fonts entirely on the computer. It would be great to have an app[lication] that was naturally attuned to fleshing out ideas of shapes, not making final letterforms. For example instead of a curve being this totally crisp border between black and white what if it could be something with [controlled] ambiguity at any point?

If you concentrated on that instead of making actual complete fonts you might just see designers (and not just type designers) picking it up like hotcakes.

hhp

[mattlag]

Nice... "controlled ambiguity" - I like it. You've planted an idea in my head. Thanks!

[hrant]

FYI here's that other one: https://typography.guru/forums/topic/98181-forwarding
Compare & contrast?

hhp