Learn FontLab Fast [Paperback]

Leslie Cabarga (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2004

For typographers and designers of fonts, the software program "FontLab" has become the premiere font-creation program of our time. Highly sophisticated, FontLab operates on Windows and Mac (systems 9+ and OSX) and offers more up-to-date features--such as OpenType support, class-based metrics and kerning, as well as an impressive array of bezier drawing tools--than any other font design program.

Learn FontLab Fast; A Simplified Guide to Creating Fonts with FontLab, TypeTool, ScanFont and AsiaFont Studio covers versions 4.6 and 5.0 of FontLab. It has been written to enable users to dramatically cut down the learning curve required to master FontLab and its sister programs, TypeTool and AsiaFont Studio. Author and designer Leslie Cabarga (who also wrote The Logo Font & Lettering Bible) packed Learn FontLab Fast with illustrations, diagrams and screenshots, and cut the text to a minimum so learning to create fonts that you can load onto your own computer and/or distribute commercially becomes easy and enjoyable.

Learn FontLab Fast explains the techniques used by five established font designers to create their own fonts. The book'll tell you everything you need to know to: begin using the program; to open existing fonts and create new ones; to scan your sketches and add them as backgrounds; to paste drawings into FontLab from Adobe Illustrator; to understanding and using the brush and pen tools to draw glyph characters; to correctly setting up parameters in the Font Info window so your fonts will perform correctly on any computer; to making Type 1, TrueType and OpenType fonts; to spacing, kerning and hinting fonts; to adding accented characters; to using components and anchors; to setting up font families; to making OpenType fonts with special features and organizing those features into classes. The book also features an extensive, cross-referenced "find-anything" Index.

Whether you are a FontLab and TypeTool beginner, or an experienced user, Learn FontLab Fast covers virtually everything you need to know.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Leslie Cabarga is an illustrator, designer and font designer who has authored over two-dozen books on graphic design. His illustration has appeared on the covers of such magazines as Time, Fortune, Newsweek, National Lampoon, and Los Angeles. He has created over 40 fonts including Magneto Bold, Streamline, Rocket, BadTyp and the Kobalt Family.

Leslie's previous book, "Logo, Font & Lettering Bible," has received high-praise from many respected typographers and designers such as Matthew Carter, Roger Black, Rian Hughes, Jim Parkinson, Daniel Pelavin, Jill Bell, Alan Haley, Dirk Uhlenbrock, Hrant Papazian, Filip Blazek and Thomas Phinney. Where the Logo, Font & Lettering Bible teaches how to draw letters and comprehend all the rules of letterform design, Learn FontLab Fast goes the next step in teaching how to actually take those letters and make them into fonts.

One year ago, Leslie figured he was the perfect guy to write Learn FontLab Fast, since he didn't know beans about the program. "I figured that I was the average designer trying to learn FontLab who didn't want to have to wade through the densely-written 700-page program manual," Leslie says. "So every time I felt confused, I got my answers driectly from the creators of FontLab and then I made it my business to explain the procedures I was learning in simple terms, and with plenty of pictures, to make the kind of manual I wanted to read myself."

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Iconoclassics; First Edition edition (July 2004)
• ISBN-10: 0965762858
• ISBN-13: 978-0965762854
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #722,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For most of his life, Leslie Cabarga considered himself not so much a writer but as an illustrator and graphic designer. Yet his very first book, The Fleischer Story (a history of the Max Fleischer animation studio) was published when he was 19 years old, several years before he would become one of the most popular illustrators in New York. Leslie went on to write and/or edit over 40 books, ranging from clip art collections for Dover publications to the ever popular Logo, Font & Lettering Bible, the only manual showing how to create lettering from scratch in the digital age. But he also produced the channeled book, "Talks with Trees," which has been gaining popularity over the past 10 years. Leslie likes to take subjects (such as the Max Fleischer cartoons, and lettering and font creation) and produce the "last word" on each subject. As he says, "It's mostly just to get these topics out of my system so I can move on." And move on he has! As amazon reader reviews of his Lettering "Bible" attest, the humor throughout the instructional text is part of what makes this book so enjoyable. "So I decided to move away from design topics and go for the humor--along with a bit of forward-looking social commentary," Leslie says. The result is the recently-published "We Hold These Truths," the story of what happens when a Truth Bomb drops on the world and people everywhere are compelled to live their truths. The book is as profoundly compelling as it is amusing. Like the book "Trees," We Hold These Truths is a channeled book that Leslie first began "receiving" more than 15 years ago. The contrast between design and spirit channeling is not so far apart, for as Leslie says, "Artists are seekers of truth. We are always questioning ourselves--why should it be this way rather than that? Where is the truth in this statement? The best artists are often those who willingly subject themselves to the most unmerciful critiques of their own creations." And," he says, "my body of work in the graphics field shows that there's nothing airy-fairy about us channelers. Actually, I'm a very down-to-earth guy." Indeed, Leslie tells us he's got another dozen or so books in planning stages on subjects ranging from health and nutrition to human sexuality. Which brings up Leslie's latest book, "Topless Summer Love Girls; A Gentleman's Guide to Women, Relationships & Breasts." It is a book that looks seriously tat men's issues while at the same time satirizing men's obsessions.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to Read and Understand, August 4, 2004

By 

Ted Harrison (Fontlab Ltd.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learn FontLab Fast (Paperback)

Learn FontLab Fast (LFF) is a real delight. In only 160 highly illustrated pages Leslie covers almost as much ground as our 700+ page user manual - and he makes it easy. LFF goes through the entire process of making a font, from basic concept to final polished product, instructing the reader in the important points of each step. The hundreds of pictures make it really easy to follow what he's talking about and to practice the techniques.
Since all Fontlab's font editors (TypeTool, FontLab and AsiaFont Studio) use the same basic set of tools and features this book can be used to learn any of them. But it doesn't stop at just the basics. Leslie makes quite a few forays out into the more adventurous side of type design and even old pros can probably pick up a tip or two from this book.
If you're into serious OpenType font creation, commercial font production, or exotic encodings you'll still have to crack the user manual. But if all you want to do is Learn FontLab Fast then this book lives up to its subtitle: A Simplified Guide to Creating Fonts with FontLab, TypeTool, ScanFont and AsiaFont Studio.

Ted Harrison
Fontlab Ltd.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Workbook, August 10, 2005

By 

Till Ramstein (Basel, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Learn FontLab Fast (Paperback)

I found this book requested in the fontlab-forum. I usually don't like books to learn a programm, but this one's different. The index works too ... This book is a real help. Thank you very much!

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book to get you on the right path with designing type., April 9, 2011

By 

R. Sansone (connecticut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Learn FontLab Fast (Paperback)

This book has been very helpful so far - I was getting back into designing type and had only really used Fontographer in the past and made the move to FontLab and this book helped ease the transition. It's not an end-all be-all giving you the knowledge or skills to do it all, but a great resource to have.