Tip of the month from PRC
October 1997
Creative use of home-made
fonts
Released 25 September
1997
We accept Mastercard/Eurocard/Maestro/JBC and Visa!
Tip of the month is edited by Peter
Ring, PRC (Peter Ring Consultants, Denmark)
- consultants on how to write
user friendly manuals
The purpose of a home-made
fonts.
Home-made fonts can be used for
(at least) three applications:
How to create
your own font or amend a font
is discussed after the applications.
Your own company font
Basically, if you don't know a
lot about font design : DON'T make your own standard corporate font !!! The
result of probably days (or months!) of work will most likely be awful!
But for advertising purposes,
you can make a very personal "funny" font which signals what you want it
to signal in your ads.
Special company characters and icons, e.g. your logo
If you have some special company
symbols, which you use frequently in your manual texts, it may be convenient
to create these symbols as characters in a font. It could for example be
your company logo, or some pushbutton icons.
You can create them in a new
font, or you can integrate them as an unused character in an existing font.
In the latter case - at least with a PC - you can enter any character using
the Alt-xxx method (hold down the Alt button when typing the character's
ASCII number).
Minor changes to a font
In some cases, you want to make
minor changes to a font. There could be two reasons for that:
- You don't like one of the
characters, for example you want a slashed zero instead of the normal zero.
- You need special characters
for a strange language, which you don't have the font for. I have for example
once made a Turkish Times New Roman for private use.
How to make your own font or characters
Notice:
If you amend an existing font for commercial use: make sure you get the
proper copyright permissions in writing !
By means of Corel Draw (there
are other possibilities, too, e.g. Fontographer), you can create your own
font. If it is a completely new font, go directly to step 3:
- Find the .TTF (TrueType)
or .PFB (PostScript) file for the font you want to use.
- Make a copy of it under
another name (keep the .TTF or .PFB extension), in another directory
.
- In Corel Draw, type the
(first) character as 720 point. The character must be printed with the page's
x,y-coordinate's (0,0) point as the font baselines: With "Guideline setup",
create a vertical and a horizontal 0 guideline, and switch "Snap to guidelines"
on.
Make sure the character is one item when exporting it, i.e. if you add a
rectangle, convert it to curves, and "combine" it with the rest of the character.
- Export it to <your
new font file>. During the first export procedure open the "Options" box
and give the font a new name. Select the character number of the character
you save. In most cases, I recommed to use "Auto" font width.
- Repeat step 3-4 for the
next character.
- Copy or move the file to
your fonts directory.
- Install the new font if
needed - Win 95 don't need it.
If you disagree
with these ideas - or have other relevant points, experiences, or ideas +/-,
please e-mail me
!
Ideas for new "Tip of the
month" subjects are very welcome, too!
Go to
last month's tip
.
Go to a list of old tips
.
Return to the User Friendly Manuals' homepage
.
.
.
.