James Puckett

You can be up and running in Metrics Machine in an hour or two if you’re already used to working with UFO files. Start by watch Tal’s video from Robothon 2009, available as an iTunes podcast, and reading the manual.

Check Windows keyboard layouts of the nations that use the Franc. If there aren’t local keyboard layouts in default Windows installs that include the Franc than it’s probably safe to assume that they use Fr. I’m basing this on how Arubans supposedly have ƒ as a currency symbol but use the abbreviation WSG instead.

I’ve designed a monospaced typeface. It’s intended for running text, not programming. There are three f ligatures (ff, fl, fi). Does it make sense to leave them in LIGA or should I stick them in DLIG to avoid confusing people? I’m inclined to go with LIGA because it looks cool and most people have no idea how to use discretionary ligatures. But before I do I’m checking to see if there’s a way for this to go horribly wrong.

This has a strong Donald Young vibe that could work well if 1980s corporate design comes back along with the new wave revival. Try designing a bug specimen of different settings (similar to the ITC Stone book) and look for things that could be touched up. And consideration adding a set of tall caps with huge Lubalin & Carnase style swashes.

You should start by testing everything with an expansive set of proofs. If you don’t have proofs you can download mine: https://github.com/DunwichType/DTF_Proofs/tree/master/Latin

Make sure you review the diacriticals thoroughly. If you find no errors you weren’t paying attention and need to look again. If you need to compare against another font use GlyphProofer from Ben Kiel and House Industries: https://github.com/houseind/robothon
Don’t compare against a massive font like Noto or Brill. Typotheque, Typofonderie, H&FJ, Darden Studio, Commercial Type, and Underware are just a few of the great foundries to compare to. (There's nothing wrong with the Brill fonts, but using them with Glyphproofer with generate hundreds of unnecessary pages.)

Build your own proofs to test OpenType features.

Open your compiled fonts and review every single glyph in every single font for things like incorrect sidebearings or interpolation errors. If you find no errors you weren’t paying attention and need to look again. 

Test with the other popular Adobe apps: Photoshop and Illustrator. Look for problems with font names and how they appear in menus. Then play around a little to make sure that stuff like OpenType features work.

Install the fonts on Windows. Copy/paste the test strings from for Indesign files into Textedit and save as rich text. Make sure they at least work in Wordpad. If you have Office for Windows test in Word and Powerpoint.

Now go back to your Mac and check the fonts with Font Book. If you get no errors then install them. Test the fonts in Textedit, and if you have Office for Mac, test there too.

You should ask the Robofont forum if there are any common problems or mistakes people make. I don’t use Robofont so I don’t know about that (but I’ve never heard Robofont users complain. I rarely have issues with Latin fonts generated with the stable release of Glyphs. I only compile final fonts with the betas if Georg tells me to.