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Creating a New Font»

There are two ways to create a new font in FontLab:

  1. The Welcome Dialog box, which appears when you start the application, has a green button labeled Create New Font. Click that button to create a new font. You can first enter a family name for the font and/or choose an encoding for the font before you click Create New Font, although neither is required to begin working.

  2. If FontLab is already running, you can select File > New Font (CmdN) to create a new font.

Either way, FontLab will open a Font Window without any characters.

Once you have created a new font, it is a good idea to first go to File > Font Info > Names, fill in the Family name and define the Parameters and the Style (even if they are temporary). Then press Build Names (you can fill in the remaining Font Info entries later). Then click OK, choose File > Save Font (CmdS) and save the new font in the .vfc format under a new filename in the folder of your choice.

By default, your Font window contains cells for glyphs from the “OpenType LatPro” glyphset. But you can change the glyphset at any time to the one which will better fit your needs using the Encoding drop-down menu. Encodings, Codepages and Unicode ranges can be switched back and forth without changing anything in the font.

Now you can start to create your glyphs (in the Font Window or in the Font Map panel), design them (in the Glyph Window), space them (using the Metrics tool).

After this is done, you can export your font in the font format of your choice, for example OpenType PS (.otf), using File > Export Font As (CmdE), install it on your system and test it.