Today I am talking about my first attempt at making a font. The program I used, key takeaways from trying this new thing, and whether I think it is worth it to try again.
So this started, as most art projects do for me, as an Instagram challenge. If you’re an artist or hand letterer, you have probably heard of 36 days of type. The challenge runs every year, and I have wanted to try it for a while, but hand lettering is not my background, so I had never really gotten the guts to try it.
Here is the thing, I am an artist/illustrator (the title does change depending on how much creative freedom I feel I have every day 😂). Hand lettering is not my strength as much as I love the idea of creating letters. I will not be bringing home the bacon as a hand lettering artist. So to invest time in this project was a stretch for me. When the internet is filled with creatives who are amazingly talented, it can be discouraging to try something new like this.
However, I have discovered a program that makes creating fonts an achievable goal. Fontself is a program that I stumbled upon via youtube, and it has been a game changer for me as an iPad-only person. I paid fifteen dollars for this iPad app, and it has made building fonts a real possibility. Granted, I am super basic with my abilities, but the fact that I can make a font with all the lettering options for so many languages and accents is mind-blowing to me.
I think my first showing, named Crazy Calligraphy, is an example of the chaos that my awful attempts at lettering are. I hope to have time to start developing this technique more. However, if I am being honest with myself, creating a font is not a high priority on my creative list at the moment.
For now, I am content with this first attempt at building a font and making it available for people to use. I am making this font in all its chaotic glory, available to download for free for those who support me on my Ko-fi because it is by no means a great font, but a girl’s gotta eat 😜.
I would love to hear readers’ thoughts on this. Do you ever try new things? Does social media make trying a new thing more daunting or more invigorating? Does it increase or decrease the impostor syndrome?
Thank you so much for joining me on my journey.
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Carolyn Sehgal 