Font Studio - Create Custom Hand-Drawn Fonts

Typography Basics

A font is a collection of glyphs (character shapes). Each glyph you draw becomes part of your custom typeface. Professional fonts align characters using invisible guide lines called metrics.

Guide Lines Explained

Cap Height - Top of capitals

x-Height - Top of lowercase

Baseline - Where letters sit

Descender - Below baseline (g, p, y)

Pro Tips

• Keep consistent stroke width across all letters
• Uppercase letters touch the cap height line
• Letters like g, p, y extend below the baseline

Why Normalize Glyph Size?

Professional fonts require consistent proportions across all characters. When you draw freehand, natural size variations occur. Normalization scales each glyph to match the font's em-square (the standard unit of measurement in typography).

Without normalization, a small "a" next to a large "B" would look mismatched when typed together. Enable normalization for usable text fonts; disable it only if you intentionally want size variation.

Typography References

→ OpenType Specification - Microsoft's font format standard
→ Design With FontForge - Open-source font design guide
→ Hoefler & Co. - Professional typography resources
→ The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst - The definitive typography reference

U+0041

Guide Lines

Cap Height

x-Height

Baseline

Descender

Sample Text

Draw and save characters to preview

Identity

Family name

Edit in the top bar → Font name

Style

Style variants not yet supported by the engine.

Metrics

Units Per Em

Ascender

Descender

Spacing

Side bearing

Word spacing

Drawing

Show Guide Lines Show Template Overlay Auto Advance to Next Normalize Glyph Size Remove Overlaps Correct Winding

Auto-smooth toggle lives in the brush dock.

Export Font

Metadata

Version

Format

Version & alternate formats not yet supported (OTF only).

Project