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Creating types : improving the font
Now that you've drawn and pasted all letters, it is time to refine all this.
To do that, you need to work on the relationship between letters.
PART 1 : SPACING THE LETTERFORMS
Spacing of letters means modifying the sidebearing for some specific letters. Below is an obvious example of how it works :
As you can see, if letters have all the same sidebearings, some letters (here r and v) seems farther, and this create some visual iregularities that will impede the reading flow.
This is due to the fact that letters are not occupying the letter space in the same way.
It now appears clearly : because of their shapes, r and v creates some visual holes represented here by the grey areas. So spacing these letters means changing the concerned sidebearings so that they should compensate these holes. For r, you just need to change the right one, and for v, the two sidebearing are reduced to zero.
On this third image, it appears clearly that the text flow is now much better.
Now that you know the principle of spacing, you can apply it to all concerned letters.
Note that only squared shapes don't need to be spaced; even letters like e needs to have slightly reduced sidebearings to compensate its curved left and right edges. And if you look closer to the second image, you'll see that the lowercase a was spaced from the very beginning.
Of course, softs offers automated spacing, but results are quite odd. It is better to space letters yourself. And it does not takes long, as long as you know which letters are to be spaced.
KERNING THE LETTER PAIRS
If you did a good job on spacing, you'll see that there are very few remaining troubles between letters. But it can still occurs when some specific letters are side by side.
above, for example, we see that the t-o pair seems visualy farther than t-v or t-h. The solution is to kern this letter pair. This means setting modifying values for the distance between those two letters. The principle is basically the same than for spacing : reducing the distance when there are holes between letters, but the difference is that it only work when those two specific letters are side by side.
Once you've kerned the t-o pair (-30), you see that it now look much better, and that it didn't affected the others ones. Again, if you worked well with sidebearings, there are few needs for kerning pairs. And, again, most font editors offers automated kerning tools...
CHECKING CONSISTENCY
Your font might now be nearly operational.It is time to check once more if your design is consistant. Generate draft font files, and use them to type texts and various headlines. print them at various sizes to see if letters are definitely ok and having good relationships. Your objective is to check the legibility, but it is also time to see through action if your idea is still there, and working.
DRAWING THE BITMAPS
The bitmaps are the rendering of the letters on-screen at a specific size. They're made of squares, and you have to draw a different one for each pointsizes, as they're not scalables (more infos on the bitmaps will soon be available in a specific article). Bitmaps might looks like this :
First, font editors can do that job for you and generate them. Their outputs will be far enough for a medium quality font face. Of course, it is always better to create your own, or at least to check for main computer mistakes, especially for complicated font faces...
Second, even if you want to have a very professional font, you only have to draw them for 2 or 3 sets (10 for bodycopies, and 24 for headlines is a good basis). In fact, tools like ATM are automatically generating the bitmaps from the outlines, but giving them some few ones will accelerate the process.
HINTING THE FONT
Hinting is an even more technical improvement. The trouble with scalable fonts (i.e. outline fonts that can be mathematically scaled, i.e. what you're currently drawing!) is that it has to be rendered on-screen. Unless you want to create bitmaps for every possible pointsizes (eternal life isn't yet avaliable, you know...), you'll have to trust the users' computers to calculate them on the fly.
But the mathematical process often gives very odd results, either aesthetically or for legibility matters : at low resolutions, some parts of letters becomes unbalanced (too thick or too thin), and sometime, some others will even disappear. Below are some Capital A at various pointsizes from 15 to 45.
Hinting consists in small and precise adjustments meant to correct those obvious differences. These adjustements are really technical, with various method depending on wether you're working in True type or Postscript, and it takes a lot of time to learn them.
Fortunately, most font editors offers auto-hinting devices, that will do a god job. More infos on that subject will soon be avaliable in a specific article in the Handbook. If you want to learn more right now, have a look at True Type Typography website that features lots of links on that subject.
Here it is. your font file is working. Let's assume that you think it is finished (you probably never will in fact!). But before you generate it, there are still some important details to check.
Let's see those about the name.
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