Practical Font Design With FontLab 5

by David Bergsland

This is the final edition of Practical Font Design using Fontlab Studio 5. It shares and demonstrates the latest, most efficient, basic font production workflow for single fonts and font families. David has spent over twenty years refining his font design techiques. This book does not offer a lot of intellectual design help. This is focused on
• "How the heck do I do this?" and
• "How can I quit spinning my wheels?" and
• "Why is this taking me so much time?"

These techniques will enable you to enjoy font design by letting you focus on the actual drawing of characters with a clear plan and a workflow which does not get in your way.

More than that, these techniques will enable you to control the consistency so your font works as a whole. The book will teach you what a companion font is and how to design one. It will teach you an easy letterspacing technique which will allow you to simply control whether you are designing a text font or a display font.

The book is a wealth of tips and techniques shared over the author's shoulder as you watch him develop his fonts. He's not teaching his method, but showing you how to develop your method of working. The book develops fourteen fonts in four font families, focused on book design. These Librum/Bream families are available at MyFonts.com, fonts.com, linotype.com, fontspring.com, and through his website: bergsland.org

The book will change your life as a font designer.

Genres: Design

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 20, 2010

About the author

I've been a compulsive reader since I was eight years old. It's not uncommon for me to read a book or more a day. I became a fine artist during my hippie days from 1967-71. After graduation from U of Minn, I almost immediately got into publishing, first as an illustrator, then as a graphic designer, then a typographer, art director, instructor, program director, author, font designer, online teacher, self-publisher. All the while I did some art, wrote a lot, and kept myself busy.

My main blog and Website is The Skilled Workman which covers resources for publishing books and ebooks with InDesign, plus training for designing fonts.

These days it's primarily a solid food believers site.

The spiritual blog is
Reality Calling which covers my Christian writing and books, plus the books of authors I represent and/or design for.

I sell my fonts at MyFonts.com for the most part, but also at fonts.com

Reviews

[David Bergsland · Rating 4 out of 5]

My best selling book. This one has been radically updated to the Third Edition. You should read that one instead.

[David Bergsland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the most recent version of my personal best seller at Radiqx Press. It is still selling well and getting a lot of positive feedback.

[David Bergsland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my most popular book, by far.