Most of the fonts here are True Type, (.ttf file extension), but some are Open Type, (.otf). Some of the designers have one of each, for example, VTC Nue Tattoo Script, (shameless plug for my bud WolfBainX). The easiest way to tell is by looking at the icon for the file, either it has two blue T's, or a green O. You could also right-click the font file, and select Properties, or chose details from View in the Menu Bar. This assumes you are using a Windows operating system. If you're on a Mac, it's probably a similar procedure.

Open Type fonts can be made with FontLab Studio5, but not with FontCreator or ScanFont, and some fonts that can be made in True Type are too complex for Open Type. You probably won't find many fonts on here with kerning pairs or ligatures.

Hope this helps,

~bito

nbgolfer12, you can also draw your letters with a graphics program like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, or even MS Paint. If you are drawing them on paper, you then need to scan the paper to create digital files of each letter, which would then be imported into your font making program.

Font making software is quite expensive, ($300 - $500 range), unless you get cracked versions on p2p or torrents, in which case they will only cost about 10 MB of bandwidth each. It depends on whether you want to listen to the little angel on your right shoulder that says pay the money, or the little devil on the left shoulder that says get it for free.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), are in the help section:

http://www.dafont.com/faq.php

~bito

@nbgolfer12: Did you submit it? See Submit link near the top of the page. You need to make the font in .ttf or .otf format, put it in a .zip archive, along with any supplemental files, (read me, graphic, etc, where applicable), then submit it, and you'll know if it's been accepted in about a month. Making a font is much more complicated than making a .zip archive.

daaams, I reviewed all of the fonts on dafont for the people who had posted in this thread. I think the upper case for Abuse is better than Posca Mad Thrasherz, (which has the same glyphs for upper and lower case).

In reviewing fonts in this thread, I have evaluated kirksucks', vinz', and your own work by comparison to the standards of most of the other freeware/shareware 'amateur' designers on dafont, and by my impressions of the quality and originality of the work. There is, and should be, an expectation that the more recent fonts by a designer ought to be better than his/her earlier efforts, which is why I sorted the fonts chronologically. It would be unfair to compare the work of someone on dafont to, say, Alejandro Paul or Rob Leuschke, in the same way that it would be unfair to judge the quality of fonts based solely on the dafont download statistics. I think my reviews were fair and unbiased. Credit was given when credit was due, and constuctive criticism was given, when deemed appropriate. From the responses of the three of you, it would appear that my comments were appropriate. If either of you three had made the 'Kai's Handwriting' font from this thread,

http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/338/how-do-you-know-if

my criticism would have been severe, because it is poor by the standards of dafont, and by your own collective works. I evaluated his work by comparison to first font attempts, deviantArt amateur work, and I also took his age into account.

My first font was so incredibly bad that I didn't even keep a copy. I did a lot of experimenting with grey tones in some of my earlier fonts, and I have since abandoned that. The grey tone glyphs look great as monochrome clipart, but they translate very poorly to fonts. They also use huge amounts of memory. I did a test font for AParliamentofOwls that had one glyph, and the file size was 175 kb. In my case, the solution to making better fonts was to make more precise source graphics, and to do a lot of image editing after importing the graphics into my font making program. I have several fonts that look pretty good when ClearType and font smoothing are disabled, but they give the Blue Screen of Death to a lot of people when they don't have the same settings that I do.

My first alphabet font, (not including Apoux, which is more of a letterbat), is on page five of the new batch. I learned a lot about precision editing on this one, which will be of great use in future projects.

@kirksucks: My first computer was a Dell with a 9.3 GB hard drive, Windows ME, and a year of free AOL dialup. The AOL browser was even worse than the ME operating system. My nick, 'bobistheowl', originates from when I was on AOL, (BOB is the owl is a Twin Peaks reference). The nickname came from a game on a message board where the goal was to 'kill' other players by solving cryptic clues which would be used to determine their e-mail addresses. In my case, 'owl' was the the clue to determining the e-mail server, because if AOL is pronounced like a word instead of an acronym for America OnLine, it sounds like owl.

~bobistheowl

What is the current file type for your font? Have you just made the images, or have you generated a font file with a font making program? As far as I know, all font making software should allow generation of a .ttf font format. I don't know which programs, other than Studio5, that can generate .otf, and you probably don't want to create a .fon type font - that's a system font.

I hope that helped.

~bito

kirksucks, I do the following things frequently:

1) Determine the specific url of a graphic on a webpage.

2) Save .jpg, .gif or .png source graphics as bitmaps.

3) Determine the source image location for pictures on flickr that don't have an 'all sizers' link.

These tasks seem to be easier with IE, compared to FireFox. I also like to browse for the directory where I want to save something. With Firefox, it puts everything in MyDocuments/Downloads. The changes made to IE7 and IE8 may benefit most people, but not me personally. I also find it difficult at times to close FireFox, as I often have to resort to the Task Manager. I use both browsers for different tasks. I just won't be using IE6 for dafont downloads anymore.

~bito

I stand corrected. Roger S. Nelsson is more knowlegable in these matters than I, but my reply was funnier.

@ Rodolphe: Most likely it is those 3% using IE6 who are complaining about corrupted zips in other threads. For you, it's good to know the likely cause of those complaints, because the error is not originating at the site. I'll be doing all of my future downloading here with Firefox.

@ kirksucks: There are a number of features that I use frequently in IE6 that have been eliminated from later versions. I'm also running a 'non genuine' version of WinXP, so I am loathe to update anything from Herr Bill.

Rodolphe, this would appear to be a browser issue. When I downloaded the .zip using Internet Explorer 6, the file was corrupted each of the six times, but it downloaded OK with Firefox. The corruption may be related to the terms of use text document. It didn't appear in the list of files when I downloaded using IE6.

~bito

vinz' fonts:

Defused: This is a winner. This is a popular style of the moment, so the competition for eroded/destroy fonts is intense, but this one makes the cut.

Officer X: This looks a bit like a freehand version of an Iconian Fonts typeface, but it is sufficiently different to merit distinction. It's weird, so it gets a thumbs up.

20 Cents Marker: Unremarkable. There are a lot of fonts like this, and there will be a lot more. This seems to be your first font, and you have improved since.

~bobistheowl

daaams' fonts (sorted by newest):

Rififi Serif: One of the better bitmap fonts I've seen. It looks great at small point sizes.

PixArrows: Successful at what it hoped to acheive. Quite useful in the proper context.

Posca Mad Thrasherz; This is a very good grafitti font. It's easy to read, and has consistent line thickness throughout. It's not as visually exciting as Abuse, though.

Coin Locker Datura: Other than the lower case z in Shadow, which could use a touch up, this is very well done, and imaginative.

BeigingWigoWhat: For some reason, I don't like this one. It seems hard to read, and not eye catching enough to make the effort. Sorry.

Ver Army: This is a good grungy stencil. It's similar, but not derivitive of other stencils, of which there are many.

Veru Serif: Probably your weakest font. This type of incomplete lettering was done by Manfred Klein quite some time ago. Nothing new here.

Abuse: An excellent grafitti font, especially the caps. It looks like you spent much less time on the lower case, but as a whole, it works.

Sweeep: I like this one very much. It seems to be useful at many point sizes. One of your better ones.

Knife Fight: I don't know why I like this one, but I do.

~bobistheowl

kirksucks' fonts, (sorted by newest):

Quickrite: Not one of your better efforts. This looks like a first timer's font that you'd see at deviantArt, only thicker. You shouldn't waste your time doing fonts like this. Leave these for those who can't do any better yet.

Ghetto Marquee: This one I like alot. It has a lot of practical and artistic potential. Probably your best so far.

Tyro Sans: This would look better if the tops of the lower case m and n were thicker. This reminds me alot of a Manfred Klein font.

Hellafont: I think this one would look better if the line thicknesses were consistent. I don't have it installed, but I would think it would degrade significantly at smaller point sizes. You can do better.

Blog the Impaler: This one's really good. It looks like a good choice for an underground publication, or for a poster on a telephone pole. One of your top three.

My First F: This sort of tentative cursive has been done to death. Probably your weakest effort.

Brutal Tooth: This is a good logo font, not exceptional, but good. It would be difficult to read this font in larger bodies of text.

Apocalypse Fax: Grunge meets bitmap is an interesting combination. Some of the letters don't seem to fit with the others, though.

Negatron: I like this one. There are many original elements. I would have made the L differently, perhaps adding a small vertical line at the lower right of the rectangle, to define the leading edge of the bottom line.

Faucet: It's good, but I have seen similar fonts that are better. You're not breaking any new ground with this one.

kitten meat: I like this one, for the most part. I think you should touch up the lower case z, and a few other glyphs look a bit sloppy, but for the most part, it seems useful in context.

Decco Disco: One of your better ones. This is a good mix of disparate styles.

Oakland Hills 1991: This is a very visually interesting font, but it's also very hard to read. I don't know if it would look better in bold. In any event, I think it would look better if the lines had been a bit thicker.

Santa Carla: Another winner. The only knock on this one is the punctuation and supplemental characters that have been imported from some other font. I like the dingbat very much.

Take Out The Garbage: I'm indifferent about this one. You have made many more imaginitive fonts since.

Pee Pants Script: This one's really good, second only to Ghetto Marquee. The rendering of some of the lower case letters could have been a bit better, but you nailed all the difficult parts. I'm very impressed with the way the letters connect. I think if you were to redo this one, with the skills you have learned since you made it, it could be truly outstanding. You might want to ask Rodolphe about the download file, because I tried five times to download it, and all of the archives were corrupted.

Bowelliberalta: I like this one, especially the dingbat. The lack of space between letters makes this kind of claustrophobic. I don't know if that was intentional.

Koobz: This is well rendered. I think Harold Lohner did something very similar.

~bobistheowl

Light Standard. If it was STD, however, it would mean sexually transmitted disease.

I don't think any fonts on dafont have passwords, but from the ones I've seen that do, the password is often spooky, bazis, or JEVS.

The term 'for personal use' can be interpreted differently by different people. If someone uses a font to print some posters advertising a small gig by an indie band, is that personal use or commercial? How about if the font is used on a website that has no advertising revenue? If someone uses only the glyphs in a demo version, would that be considered commercial use? For many commercial fonts, there is a freeware clone or knockoff. If the small time users of shareware fonts knew in advance that they had to pay a license fee, many would just chose a different font that had no such restrictions.

@ belvedere:

If you are NOT using an LCD monitor, try disabling ClearType, and check to see if the font will work properly. To disable ClearType:

1) Right-click your Windows desktop, and select Properties from the shortcuts menu.

2) In the Display Properties dialog box, select the Appearances tab.

3) Click the Effects button. In the Effects dialog box, you will see two list boxes with drop down menus. The second list box should be described as 'use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts', with the current selection showing as 'ClearType'. To disable ClearType, (and don't do this if you have an LCD monitor!), change this setting to Standard, then click the OK button in each of the Effects and Display Properties dialog boxes.

You should not do this if you are using an LCD monitor. If you try this, and it works for you, please let us know in this thread.

As for trying to delete the font, perhaps you had an application open which was using that font when you tried to delete it. If that wasn't the case, try deleting the font after the next time you restart your computer, when you have no apps running. Sometimes Windows does not perform all tasks properly when it has been running consecutively for an extended period.


Windows Vista is notorious for using large amounts of memory and CPU functions for operating system tasks.

I hope this helps.

~bito

Downloading and using dingbats in Windows is no different from using an alphabet font. You download the .zip file, extract the contents, and copy the .ttf file into C:\Windows\Fonts. With dingbats, you use the keyboard keys to produce pictures instead of letters. The dingbat font designer assigns keyboard positions to the dingbat images, rather than to letters.

Je pense que sa photo est en format .jpg ou puis .bmp. Si tu le garde comme .png, la taille du fiche serai moins que 50 kb. Si non, peux-tu le couper un peut?

Do you mean like handwriting? A flowing script with connected letters, like this?



if it is, then it's called a script, and there are thousands of different ones, many of which you would have to buy on a commercial site.

Or something like this?




That one's Clementine Sketch by Teagan White, and you can download it here at dafont. By the way, you all owe it to yourselves to check out Teagan's fine art and illustration here:

http://www.behance.net/teaganwhite. This young lady has big time talent. For fonts she need some work at the technical end, mainly with smoothing edges, but the designs for her fonts, (she also did peach sundress~)are very fresh and interesting visually. Her non typographic art, however, is incredible.


If that isn't the sort of thing you're looking for, maybe you could find a page on the Internet where there is a picture that looks like what you want, and copy the internet address.

I think you'll have to do a rough drawing of what you're looking for using some image editing program, and post it in this thread. I don't understand what want.

It sounds like you want to type the letter A, and the whole alphabet pops out, or you want all of the letters to be on top of each other, like a plate of spaghetti. That's obviously not what you want, but it is consistent with what you are asking for.