Font editor for your Iphone

Claus Oeland

Hi you brilliant designers!

Claus from fontdesignR. We have just put out a new font editor for the smartphone, only for the Iphone at the moment. It's called "fontdesignR" and it is on release sale for 2.99$ only this week. I know you are really picky of all the stuff you can put on you phone, so go have a look in the store:

//itunes.apple.com/us/app/fontdesignr/id1326846728?ls=1&mt=8

We have set up a youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9KPKYG5cgytePrlv08jqqw

As we have just released, every comment is appreciated as we strife to make the tool tailored especial for you guys 

Ray Larabie

I don't have an iPhone to test it but from the videos I didn't see the most important feature a font editor needs to have: the ability to test the font. To design a typeface, the designer needs to see the relationships of the letters while working. Without that, you can't design a font.

Claus Oeland

Thanks Ray.

This is an early release hence the price. We are aware of a ton of features that we want to incorporate, one of which is writing with your font.

There is a work-around though, you can copy and paste a reference letter in. We know this is not optimal, but the primary idea behind this early release is you can concept develop on your phone, then export it as an .svg for further development, or if you are patient, it is possible to do a whole font in fontdesignR.

Mark Simonson

Interesting start. It probably wouldn't be practical to develop a font entirely on such a small screen (I find the bigger the screen the better), but it could be useful. (Personally, I find that a small notepad and a pen or pencil works pretty well when on the go.)

A few observations:

- What's with the pattern in the background? It looks like it's meant to be a design grid, but it doesn't change while scrolling or zooming. Seems decorative.

- Bézier curve segments have a node on either end and two control handles, not a curve between two nodes with a node in the middle that has handles. That's actually two curves. A curve with one of the handles fully retracted is usually not a good idea, although it is sometimes done. Most font editors usually do this by allowing you to change a straight segment into a curve segment (or vice versa) without affecting the adjacent segments. It disturbs me to see handles appearing on both sides of a node in your demos when you change a corner into a curve point. This idea seems to come from Illustrator, but it's not how type designers like to work.

- Displaying white images on a dark background is the opposite from the way normal font editors work. I would recommend either offering an option to reverse this, or only doing it the reverse of this. Type is most often used dark on light background. Being able to see the design this way while working is important.

- There doesn't seem to any way to set sidebearings or other metrics.

- Odd that you divide a font into "letters", "numbers", and "glyphs". Everything, including letters and numbers, is a glyph. Would be better to call the category "other", or dispense with categories entirely and just display all the characters in one screen.

- No space character?

- I second Ray's suggestion.

Craig Eliason

I think the odds of type experts being interested in developing a whole font on the phone are near zero, frankly. But here's a feature you could add that could help create a niche: the ability to import pictures into the app from the device's camera. I can see type people wanting to capture a lettering image they see, and instantly experimenting with a Bezier sketch on top of that image, as a sketching exercise that could later be transferred to their font editor of choice. 

As others have said, this is a very long way from being a font editor. I would put your energy towards developing background-image functionality and frictionless transfer and think of this as a Bezier sketchbook rather than a font editor. Then perhaps your market is not only font nerds but Illustrator users too. 

Christian Thalmann

Type design requires lots of time, concentration, fine control, and attention to minute detail, all of which is antithetical to working on a phone. Computers are vastly superior to phones for type design, so as Craig says, nobody will want this.

George Thomas

Don't waste your time and skills with this. I would never use it and cannot visualize any type designer I know using it. If you really want to develop something for font development, concentrate on commercial plugins for Glyphs and RoboFont.

John Hudson

Phone, no. Tablet, maybe. Does it work on iPad or iPad Pro?

Claus Oeland

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your suggestions. We are so happy to tell you that all of your recommendations are in the pipeline.

Mark you are absolutely right, the grid will be scalable and snapable (that's not a word but you get what I mean), smart guides will also help to compensate for the small screen. Yes the vector handles are an Illustrator approach, the way you describe how the handles should work, is in the works

We chose to make it brighter letter on a darker background, to counteract eye fatigue as it is a lightbulp you are drawing on. More and more graphic applications has gone this direction.

Importing an image either directly from the camera or from your images to trace, is one of the future key features.

The reason why we chose to make it primarily for the phone is, you don't accidentally have your tablet with you, but you always got your phone on you.

fontdesignR is to begin with not a replacement for your desktop app, but a supplement. It is ment to be a concept development tool where you can experiment where ever you are, even if you don't have a sketchbook with you.

We know we have some BIG challenges ahead of us, but as of what we can read, there is no "sinkholes" we have not thought of.

Again thank you so much for writing it is highly appreciated.

Scott-Martin Kosofsky

Designing fonts on smart phones is so 2007! You really should be working on font design with Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality head sets. Just think a font, make a font. Or, better yet: don’t think a font.

Christian Thalmann

The reason why we chose to make it primarily for the phone is, you don't accidentally have your tablet with you, but you always got your phone on you.

fontdesignR is to begin with not a replacement for your desktop app, but a supplement. It is ment to be a concept development tool where you can experiment where ever you are, even if you don't have a sketchbook with you.

That seems like a pretty exotic situation to build on. For me, Laptop >> sketchbook >> phone app, and sketchbooks aren't exactly rare in most parts of the world.

It sounds like you're trying to sell underwater plastic surgery kits for scuba divers. You make it sound like there should exist cases where it's better to have one than not to, but you'd be wrong, given that getting plastic surgery on dry land is an option and it will always be the better option.

We know we have some BIG challenges ahead of us, but as of what we can read, there is no "sinkholes" we have not thought of.

You mean apart from the fact that your market niche does not exist? You must have one heck of a motivational poster on your wall.

Dyana Weissman

If this is intended as a supplement, I would want it to work seamlessly with existing font design applications. If one can export to a UFO instead of an SVG, then it *might* be appealing to professional typeface designers who don't always have a sketchbook on them. But as others have noted, that seems like a small number—at least if you want to release something very soon. In the future, it's possible that as the younger generation of phone-savvy typeface designers emerges, they may ditch sketchbooks entirely.

Given that this is a small number, it may make more sense to focus on a broader market. Illustrators/lettering artists, as Craig suggested. And in which case an SVG may make perfect sense, but then you'd want to change the name of the editor. 

Eris Alar

As a hobbyist and someone who creates on my iPhone and iPad all the time, I love the idea of this and will purchase later this week. I would love it to be a universal app so I can switch between iPhone and iPad seamlessly with syncing provided by iCloud. I spend about 3 hours a day on public transport, so a phone-based way to make some letters seems very cool. Is there a way to export the files to Glyphs or other editors? I don't have any right now, but aim on buying Glyphs when I can. 

Anyway, the points raised by others are valid, but if there are others like me so are no pro type designers but who have a keen interest and use mobile devices a lot then there could be a market.