Anyone can pick out a typeface or font for their design but not all designers have created their own typeface to use. I challenged myself to do exactly that so my typography skills could be enhanced. I wanted to honor my grandfather in some way in my art and this was the best choice I thought of. His handwriting can forever live on now in this custom typeface called
my process
Creating a typeface takes longer than one might think. The first step that I had to take was having my grandfather write out every number, letter, and symbol. At first, he wrote in pencil but we both realized that the width of the pencil was too thin. Therefore, I had him rewrite the characters with a marker.
After getting my grandfather’s handwriting, I moved into illustrator for the next step. I imported the picture of the handwriting and refined some of the letters. I set the gridlines to make sure that all the letters were the same size.
Once I completed refining and sizing everything, it was time to import into an application that is used for creating a typeface, FontForge. Every letter or number has its own svg file that can be uploaded.
Each letter, number, and symbol has an interface, like such, that I had to change so that another letter would look normal if it were together. The number 523 sort of acts like a bounding box that determines how close another letter or word is to the letter that one is working on.
The most challenging and time consuming part of making a typeface is kerning. Kerning is the space between two characters. I went through each individual letter, number, and symbol and corrected each one so that two characters looked natural next to one another.
After the kerning was all done, it was time to export the typeface. Grandfather Script is now free to download and use for any projects that one might have. By clicking the button, you can download the typeface onto your computer.