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Designing a font family with layerable weights. What am I getting myself into?
Posted by willryan42 in
6 Dec 2012 — 5:14pm
6 Dec 2012 — 5:14pm
I'm designing a typeface family with three optical sizes (36pt, 72pt, and 144pt) and a few layerable weights per each optical size. I've been experimenting with how I can make each weight line up when layered on top of each other and I'm starting to pull my hair out.
I thought having the same width and left/right sidebearing info would be enough, but that's not the case. Since the weights aren't the same width (I have a regular weight and a 3D weight, for example), having the same metric info results in them not lining up.
http://i.imgur.com/45lg2.png
I've been trying to reverse-engineer fonts that do this, such as Frontage. I've opened up a few of the Frontage weights and the characters seem to have different widths, left, and right sidebearing data (picture below). It almost seems like the designer had to line them up manually (can't see this being the only option...).
http://i.imgur.com/xEVf9.jpg
Anybody have any ideas on how I can accomplish this? I'm at the point of giving up because I can't see any feasible way of doing this.
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6 Dec 2012 — 5:21pm
Whoops, looks like those images aren't working... I'll repost them here:
Frontage weights
Examples of my fonts
And I'm using Illustrator and Fontlab if that makes a difference
6 Dec 2012 — 8:20pm
If I understand correctly what you are doing, the most accurate way to do this would be to do ALL of your art layered in Illustrator first, and all layers must have a common EM size and reference point so when you bring them into FontLab they would all then scale correctly and line up the way you want.
Don't give up because it is fairly easy to do, but it does requires a lot of attention to detail. You have to monitor closely the numbers for all the layers (width, kerns) and double check all your imported art for position.
6 Dec 2012 — 10:29pm
I would take the opposite approach from majus' - do everything in FontLab, where the same position will always map exactly. I find that no matter how I try, a copy and paste from Illustrator to FontLab introduces discrepancies. Illustrator's grid doesn't always translate precisely to FontLab's integral grid.
- Herb
7 Dec 2012 — 7:54am
Thanks guys. HVB, is there a way to have separate layers in Fontlab that I could turn on and off? That would really help if I wanted to line everything up in Fontlab instead of Illustrator.
7 Dec 2012 — 3:20pm
There's the mask layer, wouldn't that work?
7 Dec 2012 — 3:39pm
Maybe there is, but I just use brute force, doing a copy and paste to see if the two glyphs line up properly, then undo. It can also be done (equally kludgily) by adjusting the horizontal location of glyphs within their cells so that they overlay when entered one after the other in the metrics window. Essentially setting one to 'not advance'. I imagine that kerning overlaying pairs could also work. None of these are elegant; there's probably a way to write a script to do it, too.
- Herb
9 Dec 2012 — 3:29am
In instances like the ones shown, I usually import the shadowed characters, adjust sidebearings, then kern. I then make a copy of the font file, then delete the shadows and/or other decorations, which leaves the fill characters in precisely the same position as in the original file. Of course, you will need to reverse the path direction of the fill characters, and you may want to add a bit of trap by expanding the outline of the fill characters by a couple of em units. If you choose to do the latter, be very sure that you deselect "Keep original character size" because, in my experience, FontLab has a tendency to reposition characters when this option is selected--which kinda defeats the whole purpose...