Draw Your Own Fonts

This book is a must for anyone who would like to create their own artisan-style fonts. Great for crafters, illustrators, designers and anyone who doesn't want to get bogged down with a heavy 'wordy' tome. Just one look through is enough to kick-start your own ideas and the technical side is straightforward and easy to understand, even without previous knowledge of digitising fonts. The examples were varied, clearly set out and I liked the space to copy them, to get a feel for the practice of font designing. A well set out manual/workbook and I would be very happy to have this book on my how-to shelf.

Quite simply a great book! For the creatives amongst us, Tony Seddon has written a brilliant book which starts with plenty of information about the basics and technicalities of hand-lettering, which gives a good grounding for starting to create your own fonts. Hand-lettering is so popular these days, that it's great to see such a book. The layout is brilliant, I love all of the fonts used for the accompanying text, the use of colours and decorations are really effective - on the whole it's just very well laid out. This book offers such a great deal of inspiration and I imagine will be a hit with youngsters and adults alike.

This title is laid out well with lots of info provided and plenty of space for practicing. The title is perfect because for most of the alphabets, there is more drawing than writing involved. This should appeal to those who are interested in turning their artwork into fonts. The history of handwriting, explanations of handwriting parts, digitizing and computer influence included is educational and interesting. These samples will provide inspiration if nothing else.

I'm not much for the drawing side of font design, but I found a few favorites that I really liked in this collection of illustrated alphabets. They were FTI-64, Control Chaos, and Fill In. Again, someone with more drawing skills will likely enjoy totally different choices. I was a huge fan of Knit as a font even though I'm certain I would never use it since I lack the patience.

Anyone that knows me knows I am a bit of a typography whore. The font folder on my computer is overflowing at this point. So I knew that this book was going to be right up my alley and I was not wrong...

It's fun and easy to use. Packed full of useful information (ABOUT HAND LETTERING, DEVELOPING A SKILL SET, TRACING & TAMPERING, UNDERSTANDING LETTERFORMS). With fun graphics and fonts ( Including pages where you can practice your own hand lettering. Each font has a bit of extra information (ANATOMY OF THE FONT, KEY FONT DETAILS, NATURAL PARTNERS). It also includes a few chapters on how to use your newly drawn fonts (HOW COMPUTERS HANDLE FONTS, BITMAP VERSUS VECTOR, DRAWING & SCANNING FONTS, DRAWING WITH VECTORS, DIGITIZING YOUR FONTS).

If you love typography and designing your own fonts, then this book would make a nice little addition to your collection.

Draw your own fonts is a fun book if you love handlettering or journaling and want to use special fonts.

It starts with the basics and then shows you lots of different fonts that you can practice with, like origami & spaghetti alphabets, knitted & octopus letters, slime & topiary fonts and more.

If you like handlettering and handwritten fonts, I think you’re definitely going to like Draw your own fonts. This little book is filled with inspiration, examples and practice sheets.

This is Endy!! My mom grabbed this one for me because I love drawing and I wanted to try my hand at creating my own fonts. This book was great and easy to use. Even though I am only 13 I found it easy to follow and I can't wait to get it in print so I can really dive back into it and show you all what I have done. I didn't put this down for two days and it showed me everything from learning letter forms and tracing to learning skills. If you think you want to learn how to create your own fonts then check this out to see if it's something you really want to do. It's a great step by step guide.

Draw Your Own Fonts: 30 alphabets to scribble, sketch, and make your own! is a very approachable guide to hand-lettering, and designing your own unique fonts. This is suitable for complete beginners, and those who wish to learn more about hand lettering, and about fonts themselves.

As I am not an expert, I can not say whether or not this would aid an experienced letter artist, but as someone with interest in fonts, but no practical experience, I found it fun, understandable and achievable. Perfect for all ages, and a nice addition to public and school libraries.

A great book to draw the fonts in various designs.........

In the day of digital EVERYTHING, even basic handwriting has gone out the window. While people used to handwrite letters on a regular basis, or journal, we've all now turned digital, with e-mails becoming the new mode of constant communication and blogging becoming the common format of journalling. For those of us still clinging to the "old" style of letter writing, a book like this becomes a fun tool in uniqueness, offering up 30 different alphabets to scribble (including, but definitely not limited to, "Buildings", where each letter resembles a skyscraper, "Slime", where each letter makes you think of things that go bump in the night, and "Spaghetti Junction", where---you guessed it---each letter looks like it was formed out of a pile of spaghetti...). The book offers practice pages after each alphabet, as well.

In addition to being able to use all of these elements for handwriting your own fonts, though, the book also is useful to those who are all about the digital, as it offers lessons on how to digitize your own fonts once you've created them. In other words, there's a little something for everyone in this book.

I liked the book as a guide and ideas to help me design my own fonts. The layout is neat, while the explanations are concise, I like how it is a compilation of all the good ideas from other designers as well.

Firstly, let me thanks the author and Netgalley for providing me a copy for free in exchange for an honest review.

I feel that words cannot express how much I LOVED THIS BOOK! It has everything I was looking for - A LOT OF DIFFERENT ALPHABETS TO LEARN HOW TO DRAW BY HAND! The book is absolutely beautiful, full of colours, very detailed and has plenty of space for you to practice drawing your own fonts following the examples provided by the author.

A MUST for all Arts lovers and people who love journaling like me!

Despite having read some other books about Creative handwritting, this book really impressed me!

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4
I’ve been amateurishly interested in hand-written fonts since I made bloopy, ‘groovy’ letters during the late 60s. Tony Seddon takes my knowledge a few steps further.

Draw Your Own Fonts starts with a ‘lite’ 1-page history background of hand-writing to print to computers. With the current resurgence in crafts and hand-lettering, Seddon’s book gives concrete ways to start creating your own font. Seddon suggests practicing hard copying basic letter forms to gain a deeper understanding of their forms. Unless you are Really into this, I’m thinking most people would skip the basics. Why practice scales when you can play music? Because scales are in the music and promote good technique. Why bother with copying letters you’ve written since Kindergarten? Because they are basic to the next, creative step.

To develop your font, start by tracing over a font you like. Next, Seddon suggests customizing fonts by adding serifs, flourishes, and exaggerating some aspects of the letters. I wish he would have broken this down more and devoted a few pages to this. It would have been extremely helpful for beginners! (For example, basic font: now slant it. Now slant some of it. Now add some serifs, what about shading?) Specific examples would really have helped!

Seddon briefly analyzes 30 fonts in simple terms, describing key details that I probably would have missed and suggesting partner fonts. Practice graph paper is included after each font for the reader/ hand-writer to begin improvising. Fonts from 12 designers range from the frilly cupid, to knit letters, slime letters, building and topiary letters, and the wild and crazy spaghetti junction and hairy best fonts. My personal favorites were simpler: 7 o’clock shadow and blackout fun.

Draw Your Own Fonts closes with a brief 4-page discussion on computers and fonts, the anatomy of a font (this would have been way better at the beginning!) and a glossary. This is a good introduction for newbies like me and anyone interested in doing exactly what the title suggests, Draw Your Own Fonts, but please show us more about ways to improvise on suggested forms.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for granting access to an arc of this book for an honest review.

This is a great book for anyone looking to try something new. Drawing has never been my strong suit so it was fun.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the chance to read this book. The following is my honest review.

This book has good information about drawing your own letter sets and even instructions on how to digitize them for use as a font on your computer. There are thirty different example fonts and space by each one to practice drawing it yourself. The end of the book has more grids to continue practice or to try designing your own.

I personally drew 5 different letter sets in this book into my sketchbook and had a lot of fun! I think this book would be great not just for beginner designers, but for use in art projects, planners, journals or old fashioned letter writing to send in the post!

Interesting read for anyone wanting to jump into making and selling Fonts. It appears to be a good starting point for designing your own by learning the basics and from others' successful sales. Many people are making money with this skill set.
I requested this ARC from NetGalley as I have purchased quite a few and wondered if I would be able to make my own.
It was interesting and informative.

I recently started art journaling and need to word on my handwriting. This is my favorite among the books I've read on the topic. Although I received an ARC from NetGalley, I will purchase a copy for myself.

Tony Seddon discusses taking hand-lettering on paper and turning it into digital fonts. He provides suggestions and all the details about the necessary formatting. Great ideas to practice in an organized, clear format.

Draw your own fonts is a must-have for anyone who either wants to create their own fonts, or is just interested in them. It covers everything, from designing the fonts, practicing and transfering the fonts into your computers. There's enough space in the book itself to practice and I loved the little bits of trivia around the already existing fonts.

This was a really fun book. It gets your creative juices flowing to see just what ideas come your way. I really liked all the options and ideas the author had and it helped direct me to use it or to tweak it just a bit to be what I was looking for. He covers a great span of fonts and I really liked the diversity in it. Whether I was looking for slim or chunky, it’s all in there. Check it out for yourself with the links below.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was a solid beginner's guide. It is packed with a lot of information on designing your own fonts. This book has a ton of different examples as well -- 30 in all, each one wildly different from the last.. What I think sets it apart from the rest is all the information about taking your new fonts digital. Nice bridge between low and high tech there.