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Creating types : naming matters
Now that your type has a face, it is time to give it an identity. And it is essential do to that in a user-friendly way, and not to confuse yourself between the typeface name, and the font files name.
NAMING YOUR TYPEFACE
You probably had an idea about the name when you started the design. It is time to see if it is still right, as it often evolves through the making. Maybe it is time to find a better one.
Anyway, it is really important to take time to give your font a good name, that is really describing your work or is at least original. And remember that a name is the first marketing tool, and just like the title of a book or of a record, it either speaks about the face and about you (or your foundry...)
Of course, you should check if there's no other font already named like yours. For commercial faces, you can use Tim Ryan's Typeface NameBase. The NameBase lists font names, designers, dates of creation, originating foundries as well as information regarding who owns and distributes the fonts at this time. He has compiled information on over 20,000 fonts. Tim can be contacted at:
SourceNet
1728 North Moorpark Road
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
Phone: 805.494.7123
Fax: 805.497.3790
It is more complicated to check among the free or shareware typefaces. But the Point Central project is also meant for this matter : creating an extensive database of quality free & shareware typefaces that serves as a reference for users as long as for authors. So you can use Point Central's Search by name facility in the Font Finder.
NAMING FAMILIES
Now, let's assume you have a great name for your typeface. The second thing you should ask yourself is whether this face will be a single one or be part of a family. Naming families follow some rules that are helping designers to easily use the typefaces, so it is always a good idea to follow them.
If it is a single face, their will be just one name, for example like this :
Fontcut
But if you intend to make other styles (bold, black , light, etc...) one day or another, you should already name it using a FamilyName-Style formula:
Fontcut-Regular
Fontcut-Bold
Fontcut-BLackItalic
etc...
Note that the variant (italic or oblique) are coming after the style, with no space and capitalized.
And while we're talking about it, note that a reccurent mistake made by authors consists in confusing between Obliques and Italics. An Oblique is a slanted version of a face (about 12 degrees), and is really different from an Italic, that is completely redrawn in a more cursive way.
Now, if you've draw different versions of the family, the rule is to name then using a FamilyName Genre-Style formula, like this:
Fontcut Rounded-Regular
Fontcut Extended-black
Fontcut Condensed-UltraLightItalic
Fontcut Trash-MediumOblique
etc...
But attention, the genre must be considered as a part of the family name, and not of the style. If you don't, graphic softs will offers one single font name in menus with an endless submenu where all faces will be classified alphabetically (i.e.: not gathered logically by genre).
So be careful when you fill the boxes in your font editor. Here's what you should have :
Fourth aspect : some people want to include the name of their foundry in their font names. First it seems a good idea to differenciate yourself if your font name is already used. Second, this is a good way to get known, and to tag your type.
The best and the most logical way to do this is to place the name at the beginning of the whole name : it won't be confused with a customized style name, and, after all, it respects the logic: The foundry catalog contains various typeface families that contains various genres that contains various styles having several variants. So, if Fontecut was issued by the Anonymous Font fondry, we should name it like this :
AF Fontcut Rounded-BoldItalic
But we don't recommend that you should do it. First because AF means nothing for most people, and that complete names would be far too long.
Second, it will gather all your faces together using the initial of your foundry, not the one of your faces; most people will remember Fontecut (who knows!!), but not that it came from AF, so it won't be handy for them to find it.
Finally, we prefer to specify the foundry names on folder (you'll see below why).
NAMING FONT FILES AND FOLDERS
There are some few others naming aspects, this time concerning the files that users will manipulate within their computers and use to classify the fonts.
- You'll probably offer your font files either on Truetype and on Postscript. As all those files may be in the same folder, and to help users recognizing them, you got to name them differentely. Softs have their own policy on that and name themselves the font files. The only customizing we recommend is about True Types on Fontographer (Mac). It uses the suffix .suit that is confusing, as Postscript file are also gathered in suitcases. So we recommed to use the .tt suffix.
- Now for the folders: they might be usefull as people may have various versions of the typefaces. Here is how we recommend to name and gather files:
The master folder can be classified alphabetically, and has the foundry name associated, in the event of two fonts being named Fontcut.
THe sub-folders are differenciated by the format (so that both sits in the same folder) and using underscore as a separator between name and format (so that there should be no confusion with the Name-style separator).
Now that your know how you will name your font and its folders, it is time to...
...generate the font.
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