Although there are numerous font resources, designers sometimes need to create something specific to the theme they have in mind. Several different font editors, such as Fontographer or FontLab Studio, exist for those who are able to invest money into an expensive program. For those who have Linux as their main OS or do not mind installing external programs to simulate a Linux system inside a Windows or Mac OS, FontForge or Pango might be good program choices.
For the rest of the eager webdesigners, there is a free online font editor called FontStruct in which you can create TrueType fonts using preset tiles on a grid.
FontStruct supports font creation for several languages that have an alphabet of some form. For character-based languages, such as Chinese or Japanese, FontStruct allows users to make hiragana or bopomofo fonts; in other words, the language’s phonetic alphabet is used.
Also, the FontStruct viewer is fairly flexible, allowing people to zoom in and out of the sample text, type your own text, clone the font, download it, or embed it into your website to share it.
At first, creating a font from pixel by pixel may seem daunting. However, the site allows users to “clone” fonts made by other users in order to see how the letters were formed. The example below is taken from the font “Mayan” and shows the grid base of the character A and the character as seen when used.
For more inspiration, the front page of FontStruct also has an intro screencast or quick start guide that show several different ideas for font creations. They are both found in the FAQ section under the section “The Basics: Introducing FontStruct”.
At the moment, FontStruct is still somewhat small, but it is expanding. The site is continuously adding new kinds of blocks, more spacing control, and other improvements. Not only that, but its also useful as a font resource as many users create stylish and unique fonts.
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