Title: 'Beginning Font Creation with FontLab'
A workshop by Thomas Phinney

Abstract:  This is not an advanced class. All material has been designed for beginners. It will use FontLab Studio 5 software for instruction, with some previews of FontLab VI.

Students will be introduced to the basic vocabulary and process of modern type design. As we cover these topics each student will start to create a font, step by step.

The process will include planning the project; character sets; how to tackle the positioning and metrics of a font; importing artwork; and understanding vector outlines. Students will use this knowledge to create the first few glyphs of a font, and refine them a little.

In the second part of the workshop we will build upon the basics covered in part 1 and progress to an understanding of Unicode, mark positioning/attachment, alternate characters and ligatures, font names and font families. The workshop will finish with generating prototype fonts with a few glyphs.

Requirements:  No previous type design experience is assumed. FontLab Studio 5 will be installed on lab computers, and a free temporary license will be available for laptop users.

About Instructor:

Thomas Phinney

Thomas Phinney is VP of FontLab, the font tools company, and consults for global clients on fonts and typography. He has been doing type design for 20 years. During his stint at Adobe (1997–2008) lastly as product manager for global fonts and typography, he helped define the company approach to the OpenType standard and evangelized OpenType production practices to other foundries. His typeface Hypatia Sans is an Adobe Original with over 3000 glyphs in each of 12 fonts.