If you know me, it’s far from a secret that I’m a huge typophile. So I guess it goes without saying that I always harbored a desire to create my own font someday. I remember printing out those turn-your-handwriting-into-a-font templates so many years ago, even before we owned a scanner, haha. That’s some serious wishful thinking! I never got around to actually creating one, though, because I was thinking that if I tried doing it, I’d like to do it well, and … I did not have the skill nor the mastery of software to do that. I still don’t!
But we had a Multimedia course one semester ago (at least I think it was one semester ago. It’s all a blur at this point lol) and one of our activities for the Graphic Design crash course was to create our own font from scratch. So because of that, I am happy to report that I have now scratched the “Make my own font” item in my life bucket list.
Well, sort of. I’m not exactly satisfied by this font … but I made it and it’s still presentable (haha) so I might as well feature it here.
We only had three or four class sessions for the entire font-creation process—from conception to design to rendering to exporting—and that’s not NEARLY enough time to make something deployable. But I understand that the point was to introduce us to the process so we can experience how it’s done, not to actually create typography masterpieces in class.
So yeah. We were instructed to first draw a sans-serif font on paper, which would be scanned, and then we’d clean up each glyph on Photoshop and Illustrator, then use FontForge to create the TrueType font file. It was fairly straightforward, but when I was drawing my font (we were encouraged to be more creative, i.e. make something that’s not just the basic sans-serif) I did not have the foresight to think that more lines = more anchor points = more complicated paths = bigger pain in the ass on Illustrator. And I am already not skilled in Illustrator as it is. The pen tool and I have yet to establish a loving relationship.
This was me: “Well I’mma just make something halfway between printed and cursive, since that’s how my handwriting looks anyway. But that’s kinda boring. Maybe make it more calligraphy-ish? Yeah I guess that’s it. And I’ll shade it with lines instead of a solid black because that would look more interesting AND BECAUSE I AM TOTALLY CRAZY AND WANT TO MAKE THINGS HARDER FOR MYSELF“
You know how I know that I am the most indecisive person on Earth? Because I had a harder time trying to come up with the name for the font than making the font itself.
I went with “INFP Hand” because a) the class was already ending and we had to submit our work but I still had zero ideas so b) I zoned in on our professor mentioning that the name should have something to do with our personality (or something along those lines) and c) I was like, well, what the heck, I’m just gonna take that literally.
INFP is my Myers-Briggs personality type. Hand—it’s a handwriting font.
Groundbreaking, eh?
For the record, I do not get “INFP” vibes when I look at the font. But it is what it is.
I’d honestly be stoked to share this font for download. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to use in its current form. Obviously the graphics here had some Photoshop magic done to make the font look more aligned and presentable. We didn’t have time to perfect the character positioning and kerning in class, plus we only made alphabet capitals (even the whitespace character is missing!)—it needs another run on FontForge, basically. Only I can’t seem to find any of my relevant AI and SVG files except for that of the letter K (I don’t even know why) (this is the height of idiocy). Not to mention, it’s one thing to work on it on the iMacs at school and still experience lagging, and a whole other thing to expect my tiny laptop can do that much rendering.
But, like, we’ll see. Is this INFP Hand in its final state? Will I be able to create a font that’s actually usable? That’s for another episode, folks.
For now, just to make this post a little more fun I did try to use INFP Hand to do something that’s also on the bucket list—Design a planner.
The results are … okay. Wonky but not that bad. Haha.
This last one is a bonus because the truth is, in 2018 I actually don’t use a planner or a journal anymore, only a desk calendar:
Aaaaand that’s it. If you’re interested in seeing my other artwork they’re @ the portfolio site. xoxo.