Hi Tim,

I think the right anwser is Practice, practice, practice.
I'm an amateur type designer myself, and although I started out with a design about two years ago, I still haven't come up with a quality font, I'm still working on it (not full time obviously). I guess it depends on what you call perfectly crafted. I know for a fact that it takes some type desingers six years to create one quality font. The final stage (digitizing) is I believe the shortest phase. Of course, there are other designers who'll do it a lot quicker, like Tomi from Suomi, who holds the world record (http://new.myfonts.com/newsletters/cc/201002.html) at 3 hours and 4 minutes...

Kind regards,
Jean Paul

>is it a case of working on points / corner / edges of a character getting to a point where it feels right, then moving onto other characters?

No. A great typeface "is not a collection of beautiful letters, but a beautiful collection of letters." The key thing is designing each glyph in the context of other characters. Often designers do focus on getting a core of 'control characters' to work together. Your design idea might even start with a single character, but to realize it in a face, the development effort is design in context. And the 'craft' is a lot about design characters so they work together and look good together and are easily readable together.

If you read Tracy's 'Letters of Credit', and look at Briem's web site you will get the idea.

Sweat. A lot.

I think the right anwser is Practice, practice, practice.

And lots of proofing.

>is it a case of working on points / corner / edges of a character getting to a point where it feels right, then moving onto other characters?

I don't think this works. What might look perfect in isolation usually needs tweaking recursively as the other glyphs take shape. It all has to sing in the same key.

On that note,

"What might look perfect in isolation usually needs tweaking recursively as the other glyphs take shape. It all has to sing in the same key."

has anyone tried out the beta of Glyphs? It's, for now, some rough going, but one of its most promising features is you can edit kerning, spacing, and -- indeed! -- glyph shapes right inside a sample string.

[Ed.] A sample img:

The final stage (digitizing) is I believe the shortest phase.

I believe you are wrong on many counts. Digitizing is not the final stage, nor is it the shortest stage.

Not everyone takes 6 years, and not everyone starts with drawings that need digitizing.

How many fonts have you completed?

James M

I agree with Fábio. It is a lot of work. When I started, I first just dabbled with type design. Then I got a bug for it. I spent months on a font that ended as utter crap.

But then I spent another monts on a font that ended up pretty good.

And I kept going. I got a job, then a career, but I kept doing types. And I think I was right to do so.

Here is my first ever typeface:

I believe you are wrong on many counts. Digitizing is not the final stage, nor is it the shortest stage.

Not everyone takes 6 years, and not everyone starts with drawings that need digitizing.

You're probably right in many cases, yet it depends on what your workflow is. I´ve been taught to always make the design on paper and when that´s (almost) complete, digitize it. In my opinion this goes for type design as well as design for anything else.

How many fonts have you completed?

Zero, and counting ;-) I´m probably speaking out of place here...

@Tomi:
Is there a sample of your 3h4m font somewhere?

http://typophile.com/node/65433

Thanks Riccardo!

Perhaps we need to reconsider the initial question. What is a perfectly crafted font? Are you thinking of Gill Sans, Times Roman, Helvetica, Garamond, Bodoni, Frutiger, Trinité, Meta or other hunderds of great fonts?

What is a perfectly crafted font?

Given that perfection doesn't exist ;-) what about an answer like this:
"A perfectly crafted font is a work of craft which exploited in the best possible way the technical tools available at the time in order to reproduce a perfectly crafted typeface (notice the two distinct meanings of "crafted"). Whereas a perfectly crafted typeface is a work of design which serve in the best possible way a given function in a given period of time".

A poorly drawn but well spaced font is more useful than a beautifully drawn but poorly spaced font.

Craft implies usability to me. That means technically correct, functionally complete, sufficiently readable, and visibly not distracting. After that, you can start talking aesthetics.
Pretty much the deal is, what it takes to create "perfectly crafted type" is a combination of skill and work. There is no "Easy" button.