Font Q

For a long time I have been wishing I had the means to draw my own fonts / create my handwriting as a font....I have also wanted to give friends their handwriting in a font as a completely different and personalised gift - the main problem has been that font creation programs always seemed, to me, to be quite labour intensive way to go about things - I downloaded a free trial of a font program once & tried to create a font via digital drawing with a drawing tablet....and then with my mouse: both with unsatisfactory results & a waste of time.

Last week, through Smashing Apps' Twitter updates, I discovered YourFonts.com & within about 15 minutes I had my handwriting - as a font - installed on my computer!

The YourFonts.com site is super-easy to use:
There are steps on the right hand side which lead you through the process (which is clearly explained in the body of the page, with buttons to click that you just can't miss: no hunting around the page) -- one hardly has to think about it because it's all done for you! Easy as 1..2......font!

1 Print the Template
2 Complete the Template
3 Scan and Save the Template
4 Upload the Template
5 Preview Your Font (so quickly it's almost like magic! ...and you can put your own text in to see how it looks)
6 Download your font
7 Install and Use

The only place I got stuck at first was that I forgot to name my font, so the second time I did it, I ended up with a font of the same name 'YourFont' -- how blonde!! So remember to name your font on the upload page! There is also a copyright you can customise to attach to your font!

I re-drew & uploaded a few quickly drawn versions & found that if I tweak the alignments slightly in Photoshop - just move letters / characters to their base-lines if they're a bit up/under or rotate the letters slightly - the font looks more even, cleaner and nicer over-all in a body of text . I particularly had an issue with 'j' - especially after an 'a' - there was too much of a gap between the letters.

The best thing of all: It's FREE! ...and you don't need to sign up for anything if you don't want to!
Crossing fingers & holding thumbs (yes-simultaneously) that this service will stay free...

The site has clearly EXPLODED with popularity which is a clear indication that I am not the only person in need / want of this service - There were over 400 font generation tasks 'currently in the queue' after 1/2 hour of trying to get my upload in queue - repeatedly pressing the 'Upload Template' button & watching the queue decrease in hope that I'd be able to upload soon......And so I found myself in my first-ever 'digital queue'. The return of The Big Q? I sincerely hope not!