Ask HN: How to develop a font for experimental punctuation project?

[macu]

I need to find a way to create custom glyphs and ligatures for a new system of punctuation I've been working on. Is there an option readily available for private use, or do you suggest I publish graphics and invite collaborators?

Are there any dominant sites where people open their artistic and conceptual projects for volunteer input? Like GitHub perhaps but supporting a greater variety of media.

[rhythmvs]

If you need something free/opensource, there’s not many options. When you like it old-school, you can give Knuth’s companion to TeX MetaFont¹ a try.

Then there’s FontForge², which is by far the most evolved, feature-heavy project, but until recently had bad UX/UI and was a pain to install and run on OSX. It seems, that’s changed, though.

FontLab³ still is the type design “industry”’s de facto standard font editor, but development lags behind, and it’s quite expensive for a hobby project.

There are a few other proprietary offerings, notably the DTL FontMaster⁴ tool suite. But Glyphs⁵ seems to be going the winner, steadily taking over market share from FontLab.

If you like scripting your designs (esp. in Python) you should definitely try RoboFont⁶.

When you’re looking for volunteers/collaborators on your project, then do check in at Typophile⁷. For over a decade, it’s the principal outlet for all things type and type design: on the fora you’ll meet some very knowledgable experts always willing to help.

Since you mentioned punctuation, I suppose you’re familiar already with the _Shady Characters_⁸ project (and its companion book⁹). As for a detailed history, I can highly recommend Malcolm B. Parkes† authoritative monograph on the subject, too.

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafont ² http://fontforge.github.io ³ http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab-studio ⁴ http://www.fontmaster.nl ⁵ http://www.glyphsapp.com ⁶ http://doc.robofont.com ⁷ http://typophile.com ⁸ http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk ⁹ Keith Houston, Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks. W. W. Norton, 2013. † Malcolm B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: Punctuation in the West. University of California Press, 1993.

[beefsack]

FontForge [1] is available in most Linux distro package repositories and is very powerful for creating and editing fonts. There are Private Use Areas (PUA) in Unicode [2] where you could create custom glyphs as needed.

[1] https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas

[brevacor]

A great place to start (and it's free) is http://fontstruct.com/.

It's a grid-based system that gives you predefined shapes to build with. It's very easy to get started and you can create some really amazing fonts with it.

[macu]

Nice! Thank you

[pvinis]

im sorry i cant help you, but the "experimental punctuation" got my attention. can you give out some more info about that?

[macu]

Sure. I've been developing it mostly in journals, as I do a ton of writing, and I've been interested in the concept of constructed language since high-school.

Currently I have just a big collection of symbols and ideas, but they are beginning to cohere into sets I would like to refine and publish as examples of the kind of work I wish there were more of.

Example of an older idea that I'm still using in journals...

(One parenthesis opens an unspoken span or comment to the reader. These may appear in published texts. If reading aloud, I would pause and read quietly in this span of text.)

((Two parenthese introduce comments on the text. Editors should take heed. These are stage directions if the work is ever carried further.))

(((Three parenthese capture my private thoughts, especially my disappointments when I fail to capture a full idea. These should not usually be published.)))

[pain]

Collaborative Unicode prototyping revision history would speed language evolution.

[jez0990]

Collaborative language prototyping speeds evolution.

[macu]

I am still waiting for the GitHub of language construction. I don't expect it'll look much like GitHub. ;P

[eps]

Inkscape has a rudimentary font editor. Might fit your needs if just need to throw something together quickly.