First, I don’t know much about creating fonts.
I work with a childrens book author and want to create a font from her handwriting. This means that I have to have more then one character per letter and use them at random.
I’ve found ways of creating a font from your handwriting (googled) – but not that has this capability. Anyone with ideas??
Thanks!
Answer
OpenType technology doesn’t allow randomness so ‘randomness’ must be simulated.
OpenType ‘randomness’ can be simulated using groups of letters know as alternates. The idea that you could have 3 groups or more of the same letters that rotate; you’d expect to never see the same letter more than once in a word. Unfortunately due to letter combinations, repetitions will appear.
It might not be quite the font you are looking for but a good example of how some people have tried to solve this is during the development of Liza (Explained really well here: http://www.underware.nl/case-studies/random-vs-clever/)
They have a 1-2-3 grouping system of letters that they call the rotator. However, they also created the Swapper to work on top of the Rotator.
The Swapper looks back along the line to check if unlucky repetitions
appear. If so, it’ll correct the repetition of identical glyphs (in
direct neighbourhood).
If this isn’t enough they also mention OpenType randomness based on language and stylistic alternates too.
This is probably the most complete example I know of for simulated randomness unless anyone else knows anything better!?
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : gardefjord , Answer Author : Stuart