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How do you know if...

Apr 10, 2010 at 03:37

How do you know if a font has been accepted or not? I submitted a font a few days ago and haven't had any sort of reply to tell me if it has or hasn't...


Apr 10, 2010 at 12:09

Hello, this one is not accepted (not clean enough...) Sorry


Apr 10, 2010 at 13:53

Where does it say that? Does it get sent to me by e-mail?


Apr 10, 2010 at 14:01

Authors receive a confirmation email once when they have fonts online, otherwise no email is sent.


Apr 10, 2010 at 14:08

And how long does it normally take for fonts to come online, if they do?


Apr 10, 2010 at 14:14

usually about 1 month...


Apr 10, 2010 at 14:18

Oh xD That's longer than I thought, I need to be more patient :')


Apr 11, 2010 at 08:29

KaiM, look at post #2 from Rodolphe, (he's the dafont webmaster). Your font has not been accepted, because it is 'not clean enough', so it won't be posted here. You also get an e-mail only if your font is accepted. Unlike some other sites, where all submitted fonts are accepted, dafont has a screening process in which the fonts are judged on merit as well as compatibility with various operating systems, before the accepted fonts are posted.

Submitted fonts can be rejected by dafont for a number of reasons. If you make a dingbat font with only one glyph, it won't be accepted. If the graphics are too complex to be resolved when ClearType is enabled, the font wont be accepted, and if the quality of the workmanship is sub par, in the opinion of the webmaster, it won't be posted.

Perhaps you might consider uploading your font on a free distribution site, like sharebee.com, and post a download link in this thread. Then some of the people reading the forum may download it, and perhaps offer you some comments about your work.

Several of the fonts I've submitted to dafont have been rejected for having single glyphs or for overly complex subject matter, which prompted me to make cleaner fonts. I'll give you an honest critique of your work, if you give us a link where it can be downloaded.

Regards,

~bobistheowl

Edited on Apr 11, 2010 at 08:31 by metaphasebrothel


Apr 13, 2010 at 17:21

Despite the convenient confirmation on this forum, typically you'll never know why it wasn't submitted, or if it was at all. Typically it takes a month or longer for your font to be accepted. Fonts get submitted in batches, so if your font is accepted, you will get an email, and see it live on the site in a large batch of new fonts.

I too wondered in limbo about my fonts after submitting my first few. I wish there was a forum on dafont back then where I could ask, and get a prompt response as you have.

I can't recall if this info is in the FAQ's, if it isn't it should be. It's frustrating to not know the status of your font submission. this bit of info would clear it up for many new people.

thanks for listening.


Apr 13, 2010 at 18:05

i'm not really sure, but i think there's a message about that once you press the "submit" button.


Apr 13, 2010 at 20:21

Ohhh, I didn't know Rodolphe was webmaster xD By clean does Rodolphe mean sort of like...the lines are clear, like one line for each stroke? Because I used Adobe Illustrator to make my glyphs and I used a brush which made the strokes look kind of as if it was written with charcoal, it's difficult to explain how it looks :')


Apr 15, 2010 at 13:17

The lines are too trembling, the edges are not clear enough, the thickness is too different...

I know that there are many fonts on this site with raw edges, grunge effects and everything, but it's often most a desired style then this one that seems less controlled...
Well, it's just my impression, I'm not a specialist. The fact is that handwritten fonts are by far the ones that I receive the most, and I finally put a very few part of them (those that I like the most and/or that are clean enough)
I'm very sorry
Perhaps you could upload it at websites like deviantART that doesn't make any selection (unless I'm wrong)

Here is a test page (will be deleted before next update) for those that wish to comment.


Apr 15, 2010 at 13:38

kirksucks said  
typically you'll never know why it wasn't submitted, or if it was at all.
I can't recall if this info is in the FAQ's, if it isn't it should be.

It's mentionned (as daaams said) when you press the submit button.

It's frustrating to not know the status of your font submission. this bit of info would clear it up for many new people.

I'll consider that later (I have other prior things to do) but anyway you probably won't receive an email in real time, but once I have tested it on the site (for most of the fonts this is done a few days before an update)


Apr 15, 2010 at 17:40

I'm not expecting an email stating fonts were not accepted, just more clarity after hasty Submit button clicks to the length of time it takes for submissions, and that you will not get a response if it was not accepted. In addition to the note after submission, a mention of it in the FAQ's would be helpful to many. I looked high and low for an answer, and I think ended up emailing you after I submitted my first font here. FAQ's were more about font creation and download/installation in nature.

thanks, your presence here is appreciated.


Apr 16, 2010 at 18:49

Kai, I looked at the sample page prepared by Rodolphe, and here are my comments:

1) I like the design of the B,C,D,E, F, G, J and L, but the rest of the caps are unremarkable.

2) f and y in lower case look interesting.

3) As Rodolphe mentioned, there are inconsistencies in the widths of some of the characters, notably the c, e, r, s, u, and v, the right side of the m, and n, and the bottom of the z. All of these inconsistencies will be magnified at smaller point sizes.

4) It's hard to tell from the sample page if the spacing between letters is consistent, or if you have been consistent with the ascenders and descenders.

5) My overall impression is that you didn't spend a lot of time making this font. Keep at it, though. Most amateur font makers experience a learning curve, as they find more efficient ways to perform the same task, and by not making the same mistakes again.

What we don't know is the ratio between submitted fonts and fonts that are accepted by dafont. I would think that at least a third, (if not more), of the submitted fonts would not be accepted, and many of those would be handwriting fonts not terribly different from yours.

Other than opening an account at deviantART, as suggested by Rodolphe, You might consider submitting it at fontspace. New fonts appear there within minutes of being submitted. It's free to join. Don't expect huge download numbers over there, though. If this is any indication, of the two fonts I have up on both dafont and fontspace, the download figures are twenty-seven to thirty-five times larger at dafont.

~bobistheowl


Apr 17, 2010 at 14:25

kirksucks said  
I'm not expecting an email stating fonts were not accepted, just more clarity after hasty Submit button clicks to the length of time it takes for submissions, and that you will not get a response if it was not accepted. In addition to the note after submission, a mention of it in the FAQ's would be helpful to many. I looked high and low for an answer, and I think ended up emailing you after I submitted my first font here. FAQ's were more about font creation and download/installation in nature.

thanks, your presence here is appreciated.

Ok no problem, I've clarified the text and also mentioned it in the FAQ.


Apr 18, 2010 at 21:13

Ahhh, I agree with you on most of the things xD The whole width of the characters thing, I noticed when I was making but didn't know how to fix it so just hoped it wouldn't be a problem xD

*EDIT* Ok, I got a DeviantART account like you suggested and uploaded my font on there and it did better than I expected, it's already got six downloads in like a few hours and 37 views, it's even in someone's favourites xD

Edited on Apr 19, 2010 at 01:07 by KaiM


Apr 19, 2010 at 06:13

Link for KaiM'sHandwriting font at deviantArt:

http://kaixm.deviantart.com/art/Kai-s-Handwriting-161179431

KaiM, I downloaded and installed your font, and I opened it with ScanFont 3.13 and FontCreator 5.5. I have the following observations:

1) The 'Font Info', (that's what it's called in ScanFont), is incorrectly entered. For 'Font Name' and 'Full Name', you have entered 'Kai'sHandwriting', but for 'Family Name' and 'Menu Name', you have put 'Handwritten'. For this font, you should put 'Kai'sHandwriting' in all four fields. I don't know how that's done in FontCreator.

The Family Name and Font Name should be different only if you are making multiple weights of the same font, such as Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic.

For example, if you are using a Windows computer, look in your Installed fonts folder, (C:\Windows\Fonts or the Fonts folder in the Control Panel, (they're the same), and note that the standard fonts like Tahoma will have Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic weights installed, but if you open MS Word, Tahoma appears only once. The other weights come into play if you select the Bold or Italic formatting in your document or project. If you have only a regular weight installed, the font glyphs will be slanted to the right if you select Italic formatting, and the lines will be thicker if you enable Bold. For many fonts, however, the Bold, Italic and Bold Italic weights may look significantly different from the what the Regular weight would look like when leaning right or made thicker.

The Menu Name is how the font name will appear in the list of installed fonts for MS Word, Notepad, or other apps that use installed fonts. When I installed yours, I couldn't find it inintially, until I checked the font info in ScanFont. As is, it shows in the fonts listing as 'Handwritten'.

Your Embedding settings are set as 'Only printing and previewing of the document is allowed, (read only'. This may or may not be what you wanted. As is, your font cannot be embedded in a document, (if a font is embedded, it means someone can see it in an electronic document if they don't have the font installed on their own computer). It's very easy to fix that with FontLab Studio5, and the default setting is 'everything is allowed' for ScanFont, but I don't know how to adjust that in FontCreator.

You might want to look at the orientation of the lower case j, with reference to the baseline. Unless you had wanted it to look like it does, you need to lower the placement of this letter significantly. The lower case k would benefit from some work, as well. It seems unduely small by comparison to the other 'tall' letters, and I think it whould look better if it was wider, as well. You might also want to look at the spacing for capital V and W. When typed together, they seem to meld into one character. The caps for A-L as a group look a lot more interesting than M-Z, so much so that they don't seem to belong in the same font.

Your font looks better with Bold formatting enabled.

Your glyphs are VERY rough. Usually a font with similar complexity to yours, and with a similar number of glyphs, will have a file size in the 40 kb range, but yours, at 374 kb, is about ten times as large. Try opening your font project file, (or open the .ttf file with your font making program), double click one of the glyphs, and look for the magnifier; it should be prominent in the Tool Bar, and it should look like a magnifying glass with a + in the center. If you are using FontCreator, you should see a drop down list box beside the magnifier icon. Change the setting to the maximum, (probably 500%), and you will see that the edges of your glyphs look like the coastline of Norway. If you're using FontCreator, go to the Menu Bar, and chose View → Mode → Point, and you will see all the vector nodes. There are probably at least 100 extra and unnecessary nodes in each glyph.

It looks to me like you did the following:

1) You drew the character glyphs at or about the 72 point size on paper, and scanned them, or you did the same thing with a drawing app. Those images were then imported into your font making program, the baseline was manually adjusted, and the font was generated. If you did that, you missed two important steps:

a) You should 'clean up' the graphics before importing them. If you are importing graphic files like bitmaps or .jpegs, you should use MS Paint, or another drawing app, to refine the images. You would get the best results if you use between 400% and 800% zoom when doing this sort of editing. You might also find that a vector making program may do much of this smoothing automatically. Someone who uses vectors for their source graphics in fonts may be able to help you with that more than I can. If you're creating your glyphs with Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw or something else, I can't help there, (I use MS Paint and ScanFont).

b) You can, and should, make modifications to your glyphs after importing them into you font making program. As is, it would be very difficult to smooth this font, given the high number of unnecessary nodes in each glyph. Ideally, you would want to have as few nodes as is needed to define your curves and line widths. If you have done View → Mode → Point to see the nodes, you can move them by left-clicking the node, holding the mouse button down, and dragging the node to another location. You can delete nodes by right-clicking them, and chosing Delete from the shortcuts menu.

If you poke around at deviantArt, you will find probably at least a hundred fonts by other people which are really no better or worse than yours. Good luck on your next one, and maybe we'll see it here on dafont.

Regards,

~bito



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