Create your own font with Affinity Designer and Glyphs Mini

Class Description

Hello everyone welcome to my latest class. If this your first class with me, welcome! I am Jen and I will be guiding you through this creative course. I’m a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and educator based out of the midwest and I run Bella + Sophia Creative studio.

In today’s class, I wanted to tap into our graphic design skills and have an adventure creating fonts using Affinity designer and Glyphs. I will take you through my whole process of creating a hand drawn font from ideation, sketching, digitizing in Affinity Designer and then getting your letterforms into the Glyphs software (Mac version). I am sharing my process as I find that often, courses relating to font/typeface design are almost exclusively done in Adobe software and I wanted to highlight that there are other options and I have found that the Affinity software can be used to do similar things.

If this is your first time taking one of my classes relating to graphic design I highly suggest you check out my previous design courses – I have a variety that cover topics like design for good, logo design, packaging design, layout design and more. I also have some helpful marketing related videos too if you are trying to grow your creative business.

What the class is about

In this class, I will walk you through my process on how to create a simple hand drawn font. I will take you through my whole process of creating a hand drawn font from ideation, sketching, digitizing in Affinity Designer and then getting your letterforms into the Glyphs software (Mac version). Before we jump right into the font making process though, I wanted to share a quick mini overview on designing type. These tips are not exhaustive as I could do multiple courses on the intricacies of designing typefaces, but they will outline some of the most important things beginners should know.

We will cover things like typography anatomy basics, the difference between serif fonts and san serif fonts, the different parts of a latter and variables to keep in mind when it comes to type design.

Then, we will talk more about where to find font inspiration, 2 of my favorite type design books, ideation when it comes to building out your letter style. Then, as we begin to create our font, we will apply those typography basic so we can create a cohesive font.

As we create our fonts, I will highlight some helpful tips to keep in mind for sketching and inking your hand lettering if you chose to start analog. I will also highlight how you can skip the scanning phase and use the pixel persona in Affinity designer to sketch out your concepts if you have access to a drawing tablet. Then, we will digitize our letters in Affinity designer. If this is your first time using Affinity, no worries – I will go at a comfortable pace and highlight important tools so you can keep up.

Finally, we will go over how to use Glyphs Mini, create your hand drawn font and export it for use on your desktop!

Make sure to check out the class resources for some helpful tools you can utilize while working on your class project like a letter grid and tip sheet.

Who the class is geared toward

This class is geared towards anyone interested in learning how to create font using Affinity designer and glyphs mini. I will make sure to I am sharing my process as I find that often, courses relating to font/typeface design are almost exclusively done in Adobe software and I wanted to highlight that there are other options and I have found that the Affinity software can be used to do similar things.

An overview of the class project

For your class project, we will be creating an all caps font hand drawn font. You will take your hand drawing and translate it into a desktop font. We will start with sketches, you can opt for analog pencil, pen and paper that would need to be scanned or you can use a tablet and stylus and sketch right on your computer.

Once you complete your project, you can submit the following to the course project gallery to share with your fellow classmates and myself.

Deliverables

When you are ready, upload the following to the project gallery

1. Photo of your Inspiration

2. Rough sketches

3. Finalized digitized letterforms

4. Your full A-Z Sample in Glyphs

5. Optional – stylized use of your font

Tools needed

Must haves

Computer with Affinity Designer and Glyphs Mini installed

Paper, Pencils and Black Fine Liner

Nice to haves (but not absolutely necessary)

Scanner Or something to photograph your hand drawn letter forms

Drawing tablet and stylus (I use this instead of analog paper and pencil to sketch my letter forms)

I am looking forward to creating with you today!

Let’s get Started!

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long do I have access to the course materials?

You can view and review the lecture materials indefinitely, like an on-demand channel.

Can I take my courses with me wherever I go?

Definitely! If you have an internet connection, courses on Udemy are available on any device at any time. If you don’t have an internet connection, some instructors also let their students download course lectures. That’s up to the instructor though, so make sure you get on their good side!