Create your own fonts in Photoshop or Illustrator

While we may have a brilliant list of free fonts for designers, a game-changing new Kickstarter project, Fontself, promises to make it easier than ever to create your own.

France-based designer and entrepreneur Franz Hoffman has dedicated the last nine years to developing two software extensions: Fontself for Photoshop (#FS4PS) and Fontself for Illustrator (#FS4AI) (also see our post on how to add fonts in Photoshop).

To bring your fonts to life in Photoshop or Illustrator, all you have to do is draw, sketch, paint, scan or photograph your alphabet and select it. That's it.

The Fontself extensions will also enable you to turn all of your original lettering into usable fonts, including colours, textures, alternates, ligatures, illustrated words, smileys, icons and anything else you might come up with.

"No more a daunting task, requiring specific skill sets, dedicated tools and a lot of time to iterate," says Hoffman on the Fontself Kickstarter page.

Rewards for pledges

Hoffman's offering donors a tiered reward system, ranging from project updates and "a hug for supporting our campaign" for pledges of €1 or more, to both Fontself extensions plus a year of free updates, a vote for feature priorities and a handwritten thank you note for pledges of €89 or more.

In between are a range of alternative pledge options, and a number of higher-end rewards for pledges of €99, €299, €1,499 and more.

• Fontself for Photoshop converts your artwork into bitmap fonts. So you can really render anything you want in a font, any shape, colour, texture, even photos.
• Fontself for Illustrator converts your artwork into vector fonts. You get everything you expect from traditional scalable vector shapes.

You can find out more about the project – and donate – on the Fontself Kickstarter page.

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