How to build your own font

Times New Roman feel a bit stale? The cool modern lines of Arial no longer appealing? Fear not, the remedy for your frustration is at hand – a DIY font website.

Times New Roman feel a bit stale? The cool modern lines of Arial no longer appealing? Fear not, the remedy for your frustration is at hand – a DIY font website.

Springwise reports that a website called FontShop has launched a free, simple, online tool people can use to design their own fonts.

FontStruct provides budding type designers with several tools with which they can construct their fonts. For the artistically gifted, a “freehand” tool allows you to draw your font into existence, while less talented types can get there by arranging little digital bricks on a grid, a bit like building words from Lego.

The site also provides limited IP options for budding word artists, so you can choose whether to throw your font open to the world or keep access restricted to an exclusive few.

Best of all, the tool produces the final product in TrueType fonts, so they can be plugged straight into any Windows or Mac application.

The site, which was launched in April, pays for itself with links back to the commercial FontShop site.

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