Illustrator birdfont
To do the same in Adobe Illustrator, Go to Window > Type > Open-Type. The Character Panel includes options for turning off and on the visibility of Standard Ligatures, Discretionary Ligatures, different types of alternates, and other Open-Type Features In Photoshop to Window > Character, and the Character Panel opens up. Visibility of Alternates, Ligatures, and Color Alternates
ILLUSTRATOR BIRDFONT INSTALL
After you’ve finished, save your font, install it, and try it out. You can do alternate colours for any other glyphs you feel like. The non-default colour ones need to be defined as Alternates of “y” Once you have 3 or 4 “y’s”, drag them to the FontSelf Panel and assign them as “y”. The best way to do this is by Ctrl-Clicking on the layer thumbnails ( circled in the image below 8) and using the Fill (F) tool to fill the selection with the foreground colour.Ĭhange the foreground colour with every fill. Take each “y” and make them different colours. Duplicate ( Ctrl + J) the Layer a few times. When it comes to colour fonts, the process can usually be pretty complicated, but with Fontself, that’s not really an issue. We are going to create Colour Alternates to some of the glyphs we’ve made in the Ligatures portion of the tutorial. They’re great for creating posters and brochures with real impact in Photoshop.īear in mind that if you are not too good with colours, it would be best to use the Adobe Color Wheel ( ). That being said, Ligatures are something that can truly bring a font to life and give it a refreshing sense of variety.Ĭolour Alternates are, as the name implies, Glyph Alternates that differentiate in colour as opposed to shape. People these days are very into customization and specificity. Ligatures are becoming more and more commonplace in the fonts we use.
ILLUSTRATOR BIRDFONT FREE
These 2 categories aren’t the only kinds of Ligatures, but they are the only 2 FontSelf provides.įeel free to save these as a font, perhaps adding more ligatures before you do so.Īfter installing the font you’ll notice that if you type an “i” or a “t” they appear as normal, but if you type them consecutively a whole new glyph replaces the 2 individual ones. Since the extended “y” has no functional use, it is considered Discretionary. When the dialogue asks you what type of Ligature it is, pick Discretionary. Drag them to the Panel and assign them to their characters.Īfter you’ve done that, draw the whole word “yes”, with an extended “y”, similar to Figure 7.ĭrag this to the Panel and make it a ligature of the word “yes”.
Now make glyphs for a cursive “y”, “e”, and “s”.
We know this is Standard Ligature because its purpose isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Select the Square underneath the glyph in the Panel, and type “it”, and then hit Enter.Ī dialogue will appear asking you if this is a Standard or Discretionary Ligature. You might prefer to use Illustrator for this, as it smooths lines after they are drawn.Ĭtrl-Click and Drag this glyph to the FontSelf Panel. Add them to our new font and assign them to their letters.ĭraw a figure similar to the one presented below. Using the Brush Tool (B), create cursive “i” and “t” glyphs as shown below. The “i” is an ordinary cursive “i”, the “t” is an ordinary cursive “t”.īut maybe we want them to look different when a “t” follows an i”.īefore we can make a ligature, FontSelf requires that the individual letters exist as their own glyphs prior. We can create a Ligature the same way we create any other glyph for FontSelf: with the brush or pen tool. Discretionary Ligatures are more fancy, whereas Standard Ligatures are more technical. They can be defined either as Standard Ligatures, or Discretionary Ligatures. In the dialogue that subsequently appears, click the “New Font” option.įontSelf categories Ligatures into 2 groups. If there is a font already loaded onto the Panel, click “New” to clear the Panel. Using most programs, creating a ligature can be complicated, but the FontSelf extension makes it quite straightforward. They can be functional, as in the case of an “f” and “i” where the dot of the “i” is attached to the horizontal line in the “f”, or they can be aesthetic. In essence, a Ligature is a glyph that is representative of 2 or more letters.