How to Make Your Own Custom Font Using Calligraphr and Procreate

Have you ever wished you could add a personal touch to your digital lettering projects with your own unique font? Creating a custom font may seem like an intimidating prospect, but with the help of the Calligraphr font template tool and the Apple Pencil-powered drawing capabilities of Procreate on the iPad, the process is surprisingly straightforward. In around 20 minutes, you can go from a blank canvas to typing with a font made from your own handwriting!

In this step-by-step guide, I‘ll walk you through the entire workflow of designing your font template in Calligraphr, drawing the characters in Procreate, and generating an installable font file you can use in any app that supports custom fonts. Whether you want to digitize your handwriting, create a signature logotype, or hand-letter an entire typeface, these techniques will give you the ability to create production-ready fonts with an organic, hand-drawn look. Let‘s get started!

Step 1: Create Your Font Template in Calligraphr

The first step is to set up an account on Calligraphr, a web-based font template builder. It‘s free to sign up and the interface is very user-friendly.

Once you‘ve logged in, click the "Start App" button to begin a new font project. On the template selection screen, you have a wide variety of language options to choose from, including English, extended Latin alphabets, Cyrillic, Arabic, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and others. For this example, we‘ll choose the "Minimal English" template.

Before downloading the template, you can customize the character set by adding or removing specific glyphs. If you plan to use your font for a particular language, make sure to include all the diacritics and special characters you‘ll need. You can also add stylistic alternates, ligatures, and other bonus characters to expand your font‘s versatility.

When you‘re happy with your character set, click "Download Template" and select "PDF" as the file format. Make sure the "Draw Helplines" option is checked – this will add guidelines to each glyph cell to help you maintain consistent proportions and alignment when drawing your characters.

Step 2: Draw Your Font in Procreate

Now that you have your font template PDF, it‘s time to open it in Procreate and start drawing!

From the Procreate gallery view, tap the "Import" button and locate your template PDF. Procreate will automatically split each page of the template into its own layer group, with the glyph outlines on one layer and a blank layer above them for you to draw on.

Brush Setup

To get started, create a new brush by duplicating the built-in Monoline brush. This will give you a solid, even-width stroke without any pressure sensitivity. In the Brush Settings menu, you can tweak the stroke width, taper, and other properties to control the weight and style of your font. A good starting point is a stroke width around 5-15% of the font‘s point size.

Of course, you can use any brush you like for a more textured, variable-width, or calligraphic look – it all depends on the style you‘re going for! Just keep in mind that very fine details may not translate well to small font sizes.

Drawing Tips

With your brush ready to go, simply trace the outline of each character in the center of its bounding box. Use the template‘s guideline to keep your strokes aligned and proportional.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you draw:

• Sketch quickly and loosely at first, then refine your strokes with the Eraser tool. Don‘t worry about getting it perfect on the first pass!
• Keep your horizontal strokes aligned to the baseline, x-height, capital height, and ascender/descender lines. This will help maintain consistent weight and balance across the entire font.
• Pay attention to the relative width of each character and try to match the proportions of existing fonts. Avoid making characters too narrow or wide compared to the rest of the font.
• Leave some space around the edges of each glyph cell – don‘t crowd your strokes too close to the bounding box. The app needs some padding to detect and extract each character shape.
• Make sure your strokes fully connect – gaps or incomplete paths may cause the final font to render incorrectly.

Take your time and work through each character systematically. It helps to test your font-in-progress and make adjustments as you go. We‘ll cover that in the next step!

Exporting Your Finished Artwork

Once you‘ve drawn every character, it‘s time to send your artwork back to Calligraphr for processing.

Select one of your finished glyph layers and choose "Share" from the wrench menu. In the export options, choose "PNG" as the file format, select "Transparent Background", and turn off the "Include prkaFile" option. Repeat this process for each layer group in your template.

When you‘ve exported a PNG for each layer group, AirDrop or email the images to yourself so you can upload them from your desktop computer. You‘re ready for the next step: generating your font file!

Step 3: Generate Your Font File

Back on the Calligraphr website, click "Upload Template" and select all the PNG files you exported from Procreate. The app will automatically detect and extract each character shape and place them in the font editor.

Before generating the final font file, you can make some adjustments to fine-tune your font‘s metrics and appearance:

• Adjust the spacing and kerning of individual glyphs
• Tweak the font‘s overall weight, width, slant, and size using the "Font Settings" sliders
• Edit or redraw any glyphs that don‘t look quite right
• Preview your font and type out test phrases to check legibility and overall balance

When you‘re happy with how your font looks, click the green "Build Font" button and give your font a name. Calligraphr will generate the finished font files in the industry-standard OTF and TTF formats. Download the OTF file to your iPad.

Step 4: Install and Use Your Font

To install your custom font on your iPad so you can use it in Procreate and other apps, you‘ll need a third-party font manager utility like iFont. Download iFont (it‘s free!) from the App Store.

Open iFont and tap "Import Font" to locate your OTF file. The app will walk you through the process of installing the font profile – you‘ll need to allow iFont to add a configuration profile in the Settings app.

Once the profile is installed, your custom font will appear in the font picker menus of any app that allows font selection, including Procreate. To access it in Procreate, add some text, tap the "Style" button on the Text menu, and select your font from the list.

You did it! You now have a completely custom font made from your own lettering, ready to use in any project. The creative possibilities are endless – you can make fonts based on your handwriting, turn your favorite hand-drawn logotype into a functional font, create custom lettering styles for invitations and greeting cards, and so much more.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I sell or distribute the fonts I make with this method?
A: Yes, any font you create from scratch with this workflow is your intellectual property. As long as your lettering is original artwork and doesn‘t infringe on any existing copyrights or trademarks, you‘re free to use your fonts in commercial projects, share them online, or even sell the font files themselves.

Q: How can I add more characters and styles to my font?
A: Calligraphr supports a huge range of language and currency glyphs as well as OpenType features like alternates, ligatures, and stylistic sets. To add these extra characters, create a new template with your desired glyph set, draw the additional characters in Procreate, and re-import the expanded artwork. You can also interpolate between two or more styles (e.g. regular and bold weights) using Calligraphr‘s "Modify Fonts" tools.

Q: What if I‘m not happy with how my font turns out?
A: Don‘t worry – making fonts is a skill that improves with practice! If your first attempt doesn‘t turn out quite like you hoped, you can always go back and refine your lettering or adjust the font settings in Calligraphr. Try testing your font at different sizes and in different environments to identify areas that need improvement. With some patient iteration and an eye for detail, you‘ll be creating pixel-perfect fonts in no time!

Go Forth and Create!

I hope this guide has demystified the process of creating your own fonts and inspired you to explore the world of custom lettering. While drawing an entire font from scratch does take some time and focus, the ability to turn your hand lettering into functional, infinitely scalable vector artwork is an invaluable skill for artists and designers.

The beauty of this workflow is that it‘s completely non-destructive – you can always go back and edit your characters, adjust font settings, and re-generate the font file until it‘s exactly how you envisioned it. And with the power of Procreate and the Apple Pencil in your hands, the only limit is your imagination!

So dive in, get creative, and happy font-making! If you create something awesome, I‘d love to see it – tag me on social media or shoot me an email. Now if you‘ll excuse me, I have a few new font ideas of my own that I need to sketch out!