Miscellany› Typography
FontStruct from FontShop - The Test
On first viewing, this looks amazing - a bit of font fun for a Friday.
The recent rise of online applications (Google docs, Photoshop Express, Backpack) means that more good software is becoming available for free. But on further investigation, does it match up to the hype?
Easy fontcrafting
FontStruct looks like a fun alternative to laborious illustrator or Fontographer tasks when designing symbol libraries or logos for clients. The idea of clicking on a pre-defined grid to produce a quick font sounds great. A real deadline beater.
Testing the app…
Letter ‘a’ from the test font FreqSymb.ttf shown in the editing windowPixelRes tried this out for about an hour, with high hopes. The goal: produce a font that contains useful symbols needed on a daily basis for online applications. These would include arrows from Webdings (
), circles, squares, bullets, diamonds, stars and more.
Because these would be displayed at small sizes, and there aren’t many of them, it would be perfect to produce a font where all the useful symbols reside under the number keys. That way, all you need to do is remember the number.
Results
The test result isn’t amazing, but shows potential for a bitmap font with symboles, to be viewed at small sizes. The interim result (only characters A, B and C, with some arrows) is called FreqSymb.tff.
The verdict
Simply put, it’s not very good. Fontstruct is slow and difficult to use. The brush shapes available are severely limited. I challenge you to draw a circular character. FontStruct is useful for only one thing: creating a bitmap font for very small applications, e.g. creating small Flash fonts or obvious display faces. Well, maybe two. You could easily create a geometric, decorative type.
If that’s what you need, give it a go. Probably faster than PhotoShop. But then again, why don’t you just buy one or download a free one?!?
Tags: type
Post a comment
* Required fields