Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to tell you how to make
and use fonts for mobile and web using Fontself Maker.
Back in the old days font software used to cost a ton of money, in the thousands sometimes,
for the really good software.
But now Fontself has made a version that makes it really easy for anyone with Illustrator
or Photoshop to create fonts, and it's only $50.
And if you want to save 10%, I posted a referral link in my description.
And if you buy through my referral link, I also get $5.
So it's a win win.
This video is specifically on how to create fonts for mobile or web, but if you want to
see the full Fontself video that I've created on how to use the Fontself software, there's
also a link in my description for that.
OK, so let's get started.
Alright, so I just wrote out this font with a sharpie.
And first I'm going to bring it into Photoshop, and we will rotate this, crop it a little
bit, and then I'm going to hit SHIFT CMD B, and that does an auto color on it.
Then I'll hit CMD L and change my levels a little bit so I can get all the white stuff
to white, and all the black stuff to black.
And that's probably pretty good.
So I'll save this, and then we'll bring this same file into Illustrator.
And now I'll just click on it and hit 'Image Trace', and say 'OK', and now I'll expand
with CMD E. I'll hit Y, click on the white and delete it.
I'll hit CMD A to select everything.
And we'll resize from the side and holding SHIFT.
So now we have all of our letters.
And I'm only going to make a lowercase font with this for now.
I can just go in and delete the ones I don't want...didn't like the way this u turned out,
so I made a new one.
Put that one up there.
Get rid of those.
Get rid of this.
The way Fontself works, you need to have each letter be its own group.
So I'm going to select just the A with my Group Selection Tool, and then I have an action
set up that will cut, paste in front, group, and then hide.
So I'm just going to run that action for all of these.
And I'll just speed it up so you don't have to watch it all.
So each letter is now its own group.
I should have 26 different groups here.
So now I'm going to take these bottom letters and put them on the same line as these others.
And we'll move this up here.
A good thing to do is create guides so that your baseline will be the same, and then your
top extenders will be the same.
So it does take a little bit of time.
I'm probably not going to go through the entire process here, because this is just an example,
but...but if I was really making a font, I would want all of these things to line up
on the bottom at least where they should line up.
So the 'b' should come down a little, the 'c'...
This part of the 'd' should be down there, so that little piece is going to hang a little
bit.
And I'll speed this up so you don't have to watch this part either.
And, as you can see, it's very rough.
You'd also want to take the time to actually smooth everything out, make it look great.
For Fontself to work, you don't have to have everything on the artboard.
It can be hanging off just like this.
It's not a big deal.
Now we'll select everything.
I'll go to Window>Extensions>Fontself Maker.
Now you will have to have the new version of Fontself Maker which is 3.1.1 for this
work, because this is the update that will allow the catapult, which is your mobile font
and web font.
So go ahead and update it if you haven't already.
All right, now all we have to do is select all the letters and pull them right on here.
I'm going to go with 'Lowercase alphabet'.
Looks like everything is good.
All the letters match.
So now all we have to do is hit 'Catapult', and I'm going to call this Font1.
We'll say 'OK'.
Now you can just pick a browser, so I use Chrome.
So we'll go ahead with that one.
So this will actually store it to a server on the Fontself site.
And apparently, they are going to charge for this later.
So get your fonts on there now.
I'm going to go with 'Let's start'.
Then you can use your font on your mobile.
This screen will come up and there will be a QR code here.
You can share it on your website, on Behance, or any of these other options.
So I'm going to go ahead and 'Publish'.
And I think I'll just keep it private for now.
Now, when you scan that QR code, it'll take you to the Fontself app, which you'll have
to actually install to be able to use these.
So, one kind of drawback that I'm seeing with this, is that you have to have the Fontself
app installed, and you have to write your message within the Fontself app.
You can't go out there to whatever messaging app you use and write it straight from there,
or you don't even have access to fonts.
So that's kind of a bummer.
But I do think it's pretty awesome that you're able to create something with a font you made.
It's totally unique, and you can share it with the world.
So Fontself Maker and app actually makes it really easy to do that, so it's pretty awesome.
All right.
If you liked this video, please click on the 'Like' button, and I'll see you next week
for another graphic design tutorial.
Thank you!!!