Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to go over
six reasons why you might want to make your own fonts. And then, I'm going to
give you a few different types of software, both free and paid, to do that. All right,
let's get started! [Music] Now back in the day, font
software was so expensive that really, it didn't make sense for those of us who just want to dabble
in font creation or just do it as a hobby to buy it. It was like hundreds or thousands of dollars
for the font software. So, if you weren't an actual font maker and that was your job,
it just didn't make financial sense to buy font software. But, things are different now,
and font software is really not very expensive, sometimes completely free. So, now it makes
way more sense to make your own fonts. The first reason to make your own fonts,
and this is my favorite reason, is to make money. So, if you put your fonts on sites like Etsy or
Design Bundles, you can sell them there. People will buy them, they download them and install them
on their machine, and you never have to actually send them a physical product, which is really
nice. And that same font can keep selling over and over. I've made around 10 fonts with font software
called Fontself, and over the years, those 10 fonts have made about $3,000, and they still sell
today. That font size software costs $40, so it's a pretty good return on my investment. By the way,
full disclosure, I am an affiliate with Fontself, but I will include two links in my description for
that software. One is my affiliate link, and I think if you use that one, you get 10% off,
and I also get a little bit of money. The other one is a non-affiliate link, though, so if you're
not into affiliate links, I completely understand, and you can use the non-affiliate link.
The second reason to use your own fonts is customization. Creating your own font allows
you to add a personal touch to your designs and make them completely unique. If you're
really great at hand lettering, for example, it makes sense to make it into a font instead of,
you know, every time you want to make a new word, having to draw it out, clean it up in Illustrator,
and I'm sure you know the process. So, doing it once and then being able to
type those letters in is a huge advantage. Branding is the third reason to make your
own font. A custom font can really kind of establish a brand's identity and create
a consistent look across all their designs. A lot of larger companies like Apple, Google, BBC,
and Netflix have actually created their own fonts that are completely unique to that company. And,
by the way, the link to this article, which is on Core77.com, will also be in the description
below if you want to take a look at these. And, if you're a graphic design freelancer,
this is something you can add to your skill set when you're pitching yourself for a new job.
The fourth reason to make your own font is to edit or fix an existing font. Now, make sure if you do
this, that you've read the license of that font because some don't allow for any changes. But,
I've often come across fonts where I just don't like the way a certain letter looks. The rest
of the font is fine, but that one letter just doesn't look right to me. So, in that case,
with Fontself anyway, I can just type out the font, fix that one letter, and pull it onto the
extension and make a new font really quickly. Some fonts actually have errors in them too,
so I've come across a font where every time it was supposed to kind of cross over itself,
that part would turn white. So this is actually an error inside the font. And so if you make your own
fonts, you can easily fix that kind of thing. Number five is flexibility. When you make your
own fonts, you can make several variations of that same font. Maybe you want to have a bold version,
or maybe you want to have a slightly slanted italicized version. You have complete control
over whatever you need for that specific font. With so many generic fonts out there, making your
own and having them be stylistically different from everything else will help your project stand
out. And then the number six reason is that it's just fun. Designing and creating your own font is
just a super creative process, and you're going to learn a lot about fonts while you're doing
it. It's just pretty awesome to bring your font ideas to life. Okay, so now let's move on to a few
different font making programs. As I mentioned before, Fontself is one, and I've actually got
a super quick tutorial, and that's right up here at the top of your screen. But long story short,
you can basically just design all your letters in Illustrator, make sure each one is a group,
and then go to Window > Extensions and Fontself Maker. And then just drag those onto this window,
choose the uppercase alphabet if that's what you're doing at the moment,
and it'll automatically assign each letter to its character. And then if you wanted to,
you could save a font right now, or you can drag in other characters. The thing is,
Fontself does cost money. If we come over here to pricing on the Fontself site,
you can see it's about forty dollars, but you can get it for less if you use my affiliate link. If
you're looking for a free option, you can try FontForge. This one is open source software,
so it's completely free. You will have to install it, and then it's a little harder to use, I think,
but there are lots of tutorials on YouTube, so you can take a look at those. Next up is
BirdFont. This one is also free and open source, and they have pretty good tutorials right here on
their website. The program is a download, so this is not something you can use online or anything,
but it is free, so check it out. But they do have both Windows and Mac versions. Then we also have
Glyphr Studio, and with this software, there is no download, so it is web-based. So that just
means you go to the site, you can do everything right here online, including download your font,
and they have tutorials here too. All right, if you like this video and you want to see
more videos like this, just hit the Subscribe button and the little bell next to it. You'll
be notified every time a new video comes out. All right, I'll see you in the next video. Thank you!!