Free Font Designing Software – What is the best software to use to design fonts online? You might be interested to know that there’s an easier way to get free font design software download. Want to learn about free design software or free font designing software? Check out these free design software. Whether you want fonts for personal use or for commercial purpose, these will help you to design the logo and text for your website branding easily.
Fond of typography? If yes, then probably you are interested in learning about some free software for designing fonts. You have come to the right place. Here we generated a list of free font designing software along with its features and characteristics.
FontArk
FontArk is a browser-based font creator that lets you draw letters to make your own font. The most practical feature is the Outline Generator which automatically creates an outline around your drawing. You can later tweak it to change the thickness and roundness of letters. You can modify multiple characters at once to ensure consistency. For special font types, FontArk offers Logotype and Icon modes. Created fonts are exported as OTF files, and you can see what they look like in a real-time preview.
FontArk has plenty of tutorials and video guides for beginners, explaining the basic steps to creating a font. Designers and experienced users will appreciate a whole set of advanced tools that FontArk also contains. Last but not least, there are templates you can modify to create something entirely new.
Availability: Sign-up required but you can try the demo without registration. Supports only Chrome and Safari.
PaintFont
PaintFont is a simple web-based tool that takes all the work off of your hands and gives you a finished font based on your handwriting. Simply download the template (PDF or PNG file) and fill it out, either by hand or in an image editing software like Gimp, Photoshop, or even Paint. Then upload it back to PaintFont, preferably in grayscale, in one of several supported formats (PDF, PNG, TIFF or JPG). Your uploaded file will be processed and you’ll get a free OTF or TTF font. With PaintFont you don’t have as much control over the creative process as with other tools on this list, but it’s a handy solution if you just want a font really quickly.
Availability: All modern browsers.
FontForge
FontForge is a cross platform free font editor for Windows and other famous operating systems. You can create your own font, or modify any existing font. It supports various font types. These formats include TrueType (TTF), OpenType (OTF), PostScript (PS), and many more. You can easily use lines, shapes, curves and can use your imagination to draw characters. To create a font, go to File>New, select the letter for which you want to create font, and a workspace appears. You can begin creating a font by drawing a freehand shape, and later you can use various tools to modify it. These tools include: Measure distance and angle, change/modify curve points, add curve, tangent, and corner point, flip, scale, rotate, shapes, and much more. Once done with a font, save it; you can save your work in its native .SFD format. For creating font file, you have to choose Generate Fonts command from File menu. The program might look a bit difficult to use, but is really easy to use and understand.
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics software used by millions of designers and artists to create mobile graphics, logos, icons, book illustrations and much more.
One of its main characteristics is nothing more and nothing less than the gorgeous typography that speaks for itself. The tools boasted by Illustrator enable you to find a font style that fits your work or turn to other graphic designers for typography design inspiration.
You can even import your favorites by choosing from over 17,000 high-quality fonts with Adobe Fonts — across the Adobe Creative Cloud in Photoshop, XD and Premiere Pro or sync with Adobe Stock and use it a basis for a new custom font.
Let’s quickly go through its key features:
- Custom font design (serif or sans serif fonts, handwriting, tattoos and many more)
- Custom letterforms that fit your unique layout and design
- Adobe Originals (available in Illustrator’s font menu, it allows you to choose an existing font to kick off your design process, then adjust the weight, width, or slant to suit your specific needs)
- Sketch-based development (you can either draw by hand in Illustrator or import hand lettering / digital art from Adobe Photoshop)
- Image Trace (transform your imported font sketch into an easily edited vector graphic to refine your work)
- Integration options (third-party plug-ins can easily be integrated to help you finalize and manage your fonts)
CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2020 is a complete solution for professional vector illustration, layout, photo editing, and typography tools.
One of its main characteristics focuses on cutting-edge typography technologies and enhancements to core type tools that allow you to produce unique illustrations, signage, logos, and more.
Work efficiency is also important and Corel has not failed to impress in this department by introducing the Integrated Corel Font Manager. This useful feature allows you to organize and manage your font library, use your favorite fonts without installing them and work faster with fonts using the network storage feature.
Let’s quickly go through its key features:
- Fine-tune type with support for variable fonts (advanced OpenType support and complex script support)
- Fit text to paths
- Add effects to text (block shadows and contours)
- Integrated Corel Font Manager
- Special characters, symbols, and glyphs
- Font embedding
The Graphics Suite is compatible with Windows 10, Windows 8.1 or Windows 7, in both 64-bit or 32-bit architectures.
BirdFont
BirdFont is not only free, but also open source, and it’s a well-documented desktop tool for creating fonts. The interface is divided into tabs on top, main area in the middle and a sidebar with tools which are grouped by functions and explained here.
To create fonts, you can draw on the grid, import SVG icons to make an icon font, or draw letters by hand in another program (or even on paper), then import that image into BirdFont as a background and draw over it, tracing the letter shapes. BirdFont can import drawings from Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator, and export finished projects as TTF, EOT and SVG fonts. Step-by-step tutorials can be found on the official website.
Availability: Linux, Mac OS X, BSD and Windows.
FontStruct
FontStruct is a relatively simple tool in which you build fonts by combining geometrical shapes (called “Bricks”). New fonts can be made from scratch or based on other people’s work, which you can find in the Gallery. The basic interface is pretty straightforward, with only a few tools. However, this changes when you switch to Expert Mode. Here you get access to more options, like brick compositing and outlines. You can zoom in and out of the work area, switch to fullscreen mode and toggle different kinds of grids and guidelines.
Your new font is exported either as TTF or in a special .glyphs format that can be edited on Mac OS X. FontStruct can’t import existing fonts or turn your handwriting into a font, but it lets you browse and download dozens of beautiful fonts created by other users.
Availability: Sign-up required. Supports all modern browsers, but needs Flash to work properly.
Conclusion:
When you have no idea where to start with font designing, design software can help you find your feet very quickly. As time goes on you can delve deeper into detail, but the entry level software will allow you to achieve simple things easily and without any prior knowledge.