What’s new in Fontself Maker 2.0

Advanced spacing, kerning & more!

July 3, 2017

UPDATE: Check new v3.0 features.

UPDATE: Check new v2.1 features.

It took several months of hard work and a complete rewrite of our code base but Fontself Maker for Illustrator is now getting a major update (FYI, the Photoshop version will get its 2.0 release later this year).

You asked for more control to edit your fonts, so here is a deep dive into what you can now enjoy within Fontself.

Overview

Key features

  • 🔍 Advanced Spacing
  • 👯 Kerning
  • 💡 Smart Batch
  • 🎈 Scale all glyphs at once

Additions

  • 📝 Font creation template file
  • 💬 Community Forum
  • ℹ️ Searchable Help

Spacing Editing

Zoomed View

Want pixel-perfect fonts? No worries, you can now easily position and precisely readjust any glyph within a zoomed view:

  • 🔍 Double-click on any glyph to quickly zoom in
  • 🔢 Enter numeric values to precisely set glyph metrics
  • Change text preview size and background color

Advanced > Spacing View

Want to refine and normalize the space between many glyphs? Click the Advanced button and edit many spacing values at once:

  • 📐 Edit all glyphs’ spacing from a single view
  • Press up/down keys to increase/decrease any table value
  • Press left/right keys to shift the center of the selected glyph
  • ⇧ Shift + Up/Down or Left/Right keys to factor by 10x

Check our online help to learn more about the new space editing features.

Kerning Editing

You’ve properly spaced your font and wanna fix the spacing issues related to specific pairs of letters? Welcome to kerning editing in Fontself! Load this view via the Advanced > Kerning button:

  • 👯 Create kerning pairs to adjust spacing between 2 characters
  • ☝️ Click & drag to adjust kerning space
  • Press left/right keys to increase/decrease the value of the currently selected kerning pair
  • ⇧ Shift + Left/Right keys to move by 10x

Visit our online help for more on kerning editing.

Smart Batch

Ever wanted to import many punctuation signs or accented characters in one click, without having to rename each afterwards? Don’t waste time assigning a character to each glyph manually. Just name your objects once in Illustrator and Batch import them:

Scale all glyphs at once

If you ever wondered how to scale up your font a bit so it matches other typefaces, look no further: the scale button will not only resize all glyphs but also scale spacing and kerning pair values.

Navigate glyph names via Tab key

Font creation template file

Quick start your type projects with a basic font template, and check which essential accents and punctuation signs might be needed with this first iteration of a template character set.

Get this Font Creation Template from the top-right menu drawer of Fontself Maker 2.0

Community Forum

Join us and meet like-minded type-enthusiast folks to share about your experience and learn from them: https://community.fontself.com

Searchable Help

You can now easily search through our help articles via a single online resource: https://help.fontself.com

Improvements

  • ↹ Navigate glyph names via Tab key
  • 🤓 Brand new interface to match Illustrator’s UI
  • ⚠️ Windows font support has been improved — open & export any preexisting font intended to be used on PCs
  • 🐛 Many older bugs have been removed, while youngster may now arise… Help us find the newbies so we can stash ’em all ;)

Removals

  • Fontself now requires Illustrator CC 2015.3 or CC 2017 (version 20.0 and upwards). It will NOT run on CC 2015.2, CC 2014 or CC (2013).
  • Due to compatibility issues, automatic glyph substitution has been deactivate for missing capitals or lowercase letters, while missing accented characters will still be displayed with the non-accented version.

i.e. If the characters A or é are missing in your font but a and e both exist, A will NOT be anymore replaced by the existing a when typing, but the é will be displayed as an e to avoid blank texts)

Font credits: Gilbert font by Type With Pride, and Hybi5 by Peter Huebner

Now if you liked this Fontself update, please clap below as many times as you want to express your excitement (yep, you clap up to 50 times ;)

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