Hi, I run Dirt2.com (my fonts are available here: http://www.abstractfonts.com/designer/412/Dirt2)

I have a problem with operating systems though, I can't figure out how to make some fonts work on Mac. I use FontLab and FontCreator and there's two fonts in particular that will not work on Mac.

When you save fonts in FontCreator they don't seem to work in Mac for me, I don't understand why but I tried exporting the font in Fontlab and it has worked for some fonts.

The fonts I am trying to work with are:

http://dirt2.com/2009/06/juicy-hunt/

http://dirt2.com/2009/04/st-andrew/

Any help is appreciated.

Andrew2


Hey man, I have the same problem when the letters have to many nodes (busy vectors like the spray paint). I have not been able to solve it either. I am using FontLab Studio 5.0.2. Could it be the version of FontLab Studio?


Basically the safest play is to export as OpenType PS...maybe this statement sounds ignorant, but at least my fonts work on Macs :) to my knowledge, of course - as I don't have a Mac :)


By the way, tried to preview your Juicy Hunt on my Dell Studio 1537 with 2.0 Core 2duo Pentium with 4 Gigs of RAM and it choked...100% process utilization. What is that monster you've created? :)


Now...when I opened this spawn in fontlab...OMFG...so many points, overlapped curves, stray points..I guess that was the intention, to be grungy-trashy, but that's no excuse for not optimizing your font. When tried to export this to OTF FL crashed :)


I've had better luck with St Andrews...I was able to save it as OTF, and it went down to 601 k, instead of 1 MB TTF. Check it out if it works better now. At least it previews on my PC.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/4lvhmh


I can only open the fonts in FontCreator. Everything else crashes even after a clean restart on all PCs - even on the beast.

In short, these Megabytes things are completely useless.


Thanks Neogray, this whole font thing is still pretty new to me even after 3 years. I am not familiar with Fontlab at all, The way it uses coding to kern and stuff is new to me as opposed to FontCreator being very easy to use.

I've been able to preview St.Andrew on my PC, keep in mind the previewing is not really the important key here as compatibility is on operating systems. I'll try to find out if the OTF you've created works on MAC, I am grateful for your help so thank you.

I actually don't know how to optimize fonts, I just know people like them if they have alot of detail especially with prints and clothing. At the same time the size is also making it difficult to even view or open.

Koeiekat I don't know what you mean by these "megabytes" things being useless, the font size is only large because of the detail that each glyph has. Computers are capable of opening large font files and if I lose detail in the fonts then that defeats the purpose of their creation.


what kkat meant (if I'm not wrong) is that these types of things shouldn't be made into fonts, or at least that's my belief. If you're so eager to give out people something like this, okay - make it an EPS or AI file or even SVG. But when you say that computer are capable of opening large font files - trust me, I rarely have seen a font that exceeds 500kbytes in size. Not to mention that with so many stray points and open curves if someone decides to leave the fonts embedded in a document before submitting to a service bureau that will definitely end in postscript error on the typesetter. I know - you want a sharp looking destroyed typeface, but the reality is that you have to sacrifice detail in sake of usability. People like us won't have problem using your font - if wan to use it I have other ways besides installing the font.Plus I wouldn't use it for anything longer than a single word or sentence. But the problem is that many people out there would try this in their MS Word and that will be a disaster, my friend.

As for kkat - he just doesn't like destroyed/grunge/trash typography - simply put :)


That's understandable, I'll definitely consider that in the future. Providing an EPS and a font file with a lower resolution.


Andrew, I can only give you one further advice: use a better tracing program. I would strongly suggest Vector Magic:

http://vectormagic.com/home


Andrew, you know I am a fan of your fonts, they do look really good & are very detailed. But you should optimize your fonts.

Some computers crash with just one intersecting contour in a font.

You can and should edit the points when making fonts.

your designs are good, you have a lot of style so I hope this doesn't sound like I am being rude, but it's not that difficult to trace a glyph into a font program that looks cool, but has 900+ points and intersecting contours...

Not only will validating your fonts make them smaller files, they will make your fonts look better too, by ensuring the points are in the exact positions they should be in.

Whenever possible remove redundant points, correct intersections. If you do this you will see that you could possibly remove entire contours from a glyph with incorrect direction, or that overlap, or that intersect. This will reduce the file size dramatically!

And though you may not have encountered this problem yet, believe me, these flaws in a font do crash computers and will, and a font that crashes a computer... well, it's not a good thing.

I didn't always fix these things either, but now I always make sure my fonts are free of errors.

I made it a point to thoroughly understand my software & all that it as well as the fonts I create with it, are capable of.

Anywho, your fonts are really good, but without optimizing them I am sure that some who wanted to use them were unable to.


Lauren, thank you! What a nice way to say this.


I try :P he he.


I've tried optimizing it in Font Lab, I've only been able to go from 1.8mb to 1.4mb.. I've also substituted some characters to have less points..

You guys keep talking about optimization so what are the best methods to optimize a font like these?


Okay I am not qualified to be telling anyone how to design a typeface or make a digital one, but I am capable in glyph editing so I made the image above to demonstrate. But before I want to get to that, I have to address your question, "what are the best options to optimize a font like these?"

If you are only going from 1.8mb to 1.4mb after editing, then you fixed nothing. I am going to be blunt because trust me, you'd rather me put it to you this way than get schooled by the type pros and geniuses around these parts man, well I think so at least!

So here goes: The only options you really have are: A. Do the painstaking manual editing of the entire font and those thousands of points that need to be corrected and removed.

Beyond tedious yes, but if you want to make that font and would like to solve these problems, then that's what it will take.

and B. Start over. Begin a new font, and try different settings for tracing and try different formats and different sizes until the resulting outline has the detail you want, while not consisting too many points. They don't have to be perfect, because your software is designed for editing fonts. You can fix the errors after tracing your outlines.

I am being totally honest here, I downloaded St. Andrew to see what all the fuss is about, and mon Dieu!

My computer has never EVER ever behaved the way it did when I tried to open your font! I am serious! Ever! It lurched and chugged like never before! *Almost* crashed.

And I looked at the file size, wowzers.

Champagne & Limousines contains eight complete fonts, each with 379 glyphs, almost 400 glyphs in each so thats about 3,000 charachters in all right? (I hate math I could be way off there) But anyways its a lot of glyphs. Together unzipped they are only 400kb. It is a simple style considerably, but honestly, what you have made with these recent fonts are so elaborate I actually completely see where neogray was coming from.

These are much too large and intricate, you should offer them in a different format than fonts.

It's not impossible to make an elaborate font that is suitable. A really decorative font is going to take up a considerable more amount of space than non-decorative ones. That's okay. They are for decoration. Their larger file size goes with the territory.

But a behemoth is impractical. My grunge font Frail&Bedazzled that I used in the example above, is 227kb (bordering on too large I'd say) but it also contains all basic punctuation, numerals and several accent characters , 175 characters in all, so considering it's a grunge-gazillion-contours-font, 227kb is really not so bad.

I did use it in this example, because this was one of my first fonts I ever made,my first ever grunge font, and I had much to learn still as it contains many errors. I am not even sure if I joined the contours of composites, or if I made them simple glyphs again. I did update it not too long ago but only to a minor change, but anyways, as usual I digress. Frail&Bedazzled is a font that though it's not flawed to the same level as St. Andrew, but I'm not happy about it.

Because it is full of errors and problems. For what? I am not trying to bamboozle people. I want to make nice fonts for their computies because I heart letters. :)

Nowadays, I would not ever put a font out there that is so flawed. I did not know that those red stray dots outside my curves were that bad of a thing. Or that intersecting contours and redundant points were either.

But there is no other way. I have do have a lofty air about the little truetype fonts I make in FontCreator.

For those who love type and fonts, who are more than happy with what a non-hinted truetype font has to offer. I shamelessly and happily assist them.

That said, I want to be proud of my little fonties, I "optimize" them as much as FontCreator allows. I know I am not a real type designer (only in my head) but I certainly go about my business in fonting as if I am.

So, besides A. editing, and B. scrapping starting over, theres C. continue making fonts like this, because some people and their computers can tolerate them.

But I wouldn't recommend that you do so I am not kissing *** here either, if you sucked I tell you to stay home and go make a social media icon or something. A lot of people do suck at making fonts. I did for a while and I still am the worst kerner on the planet I think. but you are a very talented designer. Everything you make is extremely popular, your brushes everything. If you were to make truly amazing fonts, and by that I mean fonts that are free of these errors, are reasonably sized and otherwise thoroughly inspected and tested prior to making their debut, well you'd be a shot-caller then, :P

And the pic shows a bunch of glyphs that interesct overlap or are necessary. They could all be selected and deleted.

Your font is much much more complex....but I don't think it's impossible to edit them thought it will take a bit of time.

Well. I need to get off my high horse now and get back to using fontcreator and my blogspot lol.

:::shakes fist at lunarpages::: ('nother story.)

Good luck man and everyone here on the forum, ~Cheerio from the Font Gimp. I mean Nymph. Ciao.


Geez, Laurie - you're such a writer!!! Maybe Alex should think of opening a "How-To" or "Tips and tricks" section of this site. Every word you say is 100% right and I agree. One point tho : when I pointed VectorMagic, there was no response from Andrew - you people should at least take a look at the suggestions others made. If you want, we can try out this - send me a bitmap file of your original design for one character and I will see how it behaves in VectorMagic - and I will return it back to you, so you can decide whether the tool is right for you. I have no idea how you do your bitmap to vector conversions, do you make your original designs by hand (I mean, on paper with a spray, for example) or entirely in Photoshop. But we can try it, right?


Font Creator, which Andrew uses, does not import vectors. Only bitmaps. And only saves as TrueType, no OTF option. The only option Andrew has is setting conversion to super smooth and then simply apply what Lauren said. Without ifs or buts.

Best solution is of course as suggested, forget about turning things like these into megamonster fonts. Just make vectors. More than good enough for making a T-shirt or whatever.

@Ivan, it is not so much whether I like destroyed/grunge/trash typography or not, my liking is a personal thing and utterly subjective. I said useless because this thing, as a font, [color=red]is[/color] useless.


I think Andrew also has FontLab. I am the unfortunate one who does not


Sorry Neogray, didn't mean to avoid any suggestions.. it's just that I have illustrator that I use for conversions and I don't think I need anymore software I want to work with what I have.

Yes Kat, Font Creator is my main application.. The only one I have figured out most of the options for. FontLab uses scripting and OTF coding for kerning and stuff and I don't know how I'm supposed to use it unless I somehow learn how to add the coding. With fontcreator it can take days to important vectors to fonts - the way the process is it's just very slow. The larger or more complex the bitmap you important the higher the quality, larger the size of it is.

I use pen and paper, illustrator and photoshop to create my fonts though. Fontlab allows extremely easy importing of vector shapes - it's almost instant where as fontlab takes about 3-10 minutes depending on the size and detail.

I have various grunge fonts out though, some are 100kb, some are 200kb, some are 300kb, the larger ones are the ones I wanted to have better quality grains and textures.

The best advice I've learned from this thread is to simply avoid doing too much detail and adding too much of these textures because I now realize font files really shouldn't be that big because they're loaded on many applications. One load to the wrong app can crash someone's computer, I know I've crashed my computer using other people's fonts.

I think St. Andrew is the least of my problems when it comes to optimization though but I do appreciate the feedback on it and I learned about optimization which will help in the future but my original question was about making it work on Mac and I think Neogray did help with that conversion as far as I know, I am hoping the file works on Mac but when they sent the link for it they had only mentioned they converted it to optimize and lower the filesize.

There are many spray paint fonts, if you do remove grains and textures from it it will lose it's quality and it will simply not look as good as it can. The way it's used it up to the person who downloaded it but my initial purpose of making larger resolution fonts is for people who create products and clothing - these are the people who will endure a font's large filesize for it's resolution.

Nymphont I still don't know how you've been able to optimize items in FontCreator? You have criticized me for uploading a flawed font but I did not know it was flawed, just because it's a large file doesn't necessarily mean it's flawed? What exactly would you say is wrong with "St Andrew"?

Thank you all.


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