How To Create Your Own Digitized Fonts (Students Can, Too!)

One of my students has been tirelessly writing a book for her Genius Hour project. She has designed the entire layout through storyboarding and has rough illustrations and a manuscript ready to go. She has even hand-drawn her own typography which the story will be written in.

It gets better: One of her classmates’ parents took her typography and turned it into a digitized font. She showed me the file on her Google Drive which had a .ttf file extension name and looked like this:

Installing the Font

Finder > Go > Computer > Macintosh HD > Library > Fonts

First, I had to know how to put it on my own computer. On my Macbook Air, I downloaded the file and from my Finder window, I clicked on “Go” in the header menu and clicked on "Computer". In the menu that opened, I clicked on Macintosh HD > Library > Fonts. I then dragged the downloaded file into the Fonts menu, and voila! I was able to use it immediately as a choice in Pages, MS Word, and other OSX apps that allow you to choose your own font! 

Here is Lily’s font:

So then I got thinking: how hard could this be? Lily took care of the artistry, but could a teacher deal with the workflow that students would have to go through to digitize it? Or could students do it, too? I quickly found out that both are true because I made my own font using MyScriptFont.com too! 

How to Make Your Own Font Digitally

1. Go to MyScriptFont.com and download the available font creation template. You can move the file into the cloud to easily transfer to digital annotation apps, which is what I will outline here. (If you’re not confident with digital workflows, you can print the template, have students fill it out in pen, and scan it to upload to the website.)

2. I first saved the file in Google Drive and opened it using the UPAD app on my iPad.

Saved in Google Drive, tap on the "i" and "Open In..."

Select your .pdf annotation app of choice. I used UPAD.

3. UPAD allows me to pinch and zoom easily and use beautifully sleek pen tools to create my typography. Using a stylus for digital font creation is helpful, too! Note that the letters on the template will guide you to know which letters to draw in which boxes, but this can cause interference when drawing. I anticipate this would be a bigger problem in younger classes than in older classes.

Full view of typography I created in UPAD.

Pinching and zooming within UPAD allows me to draw with precision.

4. After my drawings were complete, I had to export my work back to Google Drive so that I could access it on my Macbook again. I took the file and uploaded it to MyScriptFont.com, where it converted the .pdf into .ttf format. As soon as I installed it on my Mac (using the same steps for installing a font as above), I could use it in Pages, MS Word, etc. WOW! So, so, so easy! 

So there you have it - teachers and kids could totally do this! Imagine the impact on a struggling writer as they see their own handwriting light up a screen. How motivating! 

Please share screenshots of any fonts your students create with me on Twitter! Happy designing!