Category: Lettering

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Registering the Copyright for Your Fonts (USA)

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Registering the Copyright for Your Fonts

  I promised a few font designers that I would create a tutorial on how to register fonts with the copyright office, once I had it all figured out and had successfully completed some of my own registrations. Standard disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer or intellectual property professional; this is not legal or professional advice. This post won’t get into why you’d want to register your copyright; there are dozens of articles that cover why registering with the government is an extra helpful step above and beyond the automatic basic. . . Read More!

Creating a Font from Geometric Shapes: Part 4

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Creating a font from geometric shapes part 4

I’ve been slacking like mad on getting this final blog post written; you get near the end of making a font, and you just wanna get the dang font made, you know?! When last we spoke about this process, we’d finished constructing the letters, and it was time to move to spacing and kerning. Spacing is first – setting the optimum left and right margins for each letter. Fortunately, at least for the uppercase, you can figure out the best spacing for rounded letters like O and straight-sided letters like. . . Read More!

Creating a Font from Geometric Shapes: Part 3

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Creating a font from geometric shapes, part 3

Character construction continues! I’m not going to get into every single character to show how it’s made from either the basic geometric shapes, or from parts of previously made characters, but I do have a few to share that I thought were the more interesting items. First off, let’s not forget that there’s punctuation to create as well! Some seem easy (for the pound/hashtag, it’s just two wide strokes and two narrow strokes), but some are more of a challenge. Here I made the braces (also known as curly brackets). . . Read More!

Creating a Font from Geometric Shapes: Part 2

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Creating a font from geometric shapes, part 2

Welcome back! In part 1 of this series, we created a Font Creator file, and built our basic straight strokes. Now we’re going to make a few more basic shapes, and dig in with making some letters. Many of our letters can be made with those straight strokes, but you know there’s one more major shape that we’re going to need: We need a full-height circle as the base for the letter O. Then the letter O will serve as a building block for C, G, Q, and the zero.. . . Read More!

Creating a Font from Geometric Shapes: Part 1

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Creating a font from geometric shapes

Many times I’ve had someone tell me, “I’d love to make fonts, but I just don’t have the creativity.” So I’m going to make a new font that uses nothing but some basic geometric shapes—primarily circles and rectangles—as the building blocks. No lettering skills necessary, just a bit of math! (And I’m totally using my computer’s calculator for that part.) You should also have a basic knowledge of using a pen tool with curves. I’ll be using Font Creator for all of the creation of this one, since it’s my. . . Read More!

Font Tutorial: Renaming Font Files (for Duplicates and Organization)

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Font tutorial: renaming font files when you have duplicate names, or just for organization

Hey howdy hey, font fans! I’ve seen a couple of font questions come up lately, and have a solution for both. The questions are: – What do I do if I get a new font, but I already have a font installed with the same name? – Is there a way to rename my fonts so I can keep track of which ones have commercial licenses? This tutorial is going to show you how to change the name of a font inside its code, so that it displays with that. . . Read More!

Video Tutorials: Creating Color-Changing Mockups in Photoshop

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Color-changing mug mockup tutorial

Yo, party people! I was asked to do this particular set of tutorials in video form, so I’m breaking away from my usual text-and-screenshot methods and stepping out of the ol’ comfort zone! Here are a pair of videos covering how to take a photo of a plain white object and making it so you can change the color of that object (video 1) and how to create a Photoshop smart object so you can easily place an endless number of designs in your mockup (video 1). Part 1, 15. . . Read More!

Missy’s Font and Lettering Blog Post Roundup

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Missy's Tutorial and Blog Post Roundup

  I’ve written a lot of tutorials and blog posts, and they’re scattered here, there, and everywhere. So for my own reference (And for yours, too!) I’m creating this one central post where I can find all of my blog posts, tutorials, and general rants about fonts and lettering in one place.   FONT CREATION Creating a font from scratch, using all free programs – This was a very early post that covered some font-creation basics using Inkscape, GIMP, and FontForge. I don’t use those programs on the regular myself,. . . Read More!

Tutorial: Creating a Mist Look in the Procreate App

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final mist effect

Hello again! Back with another effect tutorial for the Procreate app in iOS. I’m calling this one “spooky,” since Halloween is just around the corner, but I guess it doesn’t have to be — you could draw a silhouette of a superstar singer, or a fabulous something/someone else, and have the lights and mist pouring around them. Anyhoo, my place is not to judge what you use this mist effect for. Let’s learn how to do it! I’m creating this one on the 4×6 size in Procreate; measurements and percentages. . . Read More!

Tutorial: Creating a Water Drop Look in the Procreate App

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final work with 7 visible layers

Hello, all! I’m messing around again with trying to recreate Photoshop effects in Procreate. This time, I’m doing words created out of standing water! In this tutorial, we’re going to get really familiar with the layer menu. Especially the option farthest to the right: Select Contents. Learning about this option is going to open up lots of new experiments for me. (We’re also going to get quite a bit of use out of the Clear option here.) And as always, we’re going to create new layers for pretty much every. . . Read More!