grunge effect

Hasan Abu Afash

I would like to apply the same grunge effect from the English font to the Arabic font.

Is there any automatic script, python or action to do that?

Vasil Stanev

Hi.
I don't think there is any of the above. Back in 2014, when we at Fontfabric made the Nexa Rust family, it went something like this (if I remember correctly):
1. find a texture of an asphalt road
2. autotrace in Adobe Illustrator and be sure that it is small in byte size. It should be 2-5 times bigger than a letter so you have enough information to create the pattern. Keep size consistent thoughout.
3. Set as pattern
4. Set the base font as outlined shapes with the appropriate size
5. Apply the patern (swatch) and move it around inside the letter so each glyph has a different texture
5a. Roughen filter
6. Push an effect, I think it was inner glow /Darken mode from the contour inwards so you can be sure no part of the rexture intersects the outer contour. This is important when doing a connected script, Latin or in your case Arabic.
7. You now have a distressed letter with a swatch. You need to turn it into a hard vector. Rasterize, then Autotrace your creation with specific parameteres that everyone follows. This way the inner glow turns to a black zone as in the image above and the second trace further distorts the pattern, giving you what you need.
8. Your name is Vasil and you need to go through each of the thousands of glyphs and clean up overlaps, strange shapes due to filter, make sure there is no texture in the connectors between the lowercase letters, and adjust the general look
copy-paste glphs back to... um, Glyphs for Mac until your fingers bleed. Keep in mind that pasting too many will clog the RAM. You devise all kinds of RAM-saving tricks to make the font happen. The fonts weight megabytes each, so be sure to not have gone crazy with the number of characters.
9. release to MyFonts to massive success and earn gazillions of dollars.

This method was devised by Radomir Tinkov, who you might know as the maker of Gilroy. 

Hasan Abu Afash

Thanks for this nice reply and wonderful method.
By the way, FontLab 7 had action called distort. It gave the attached result ... but the inside texture of an asphalt road need large of work.
Hope there are an action to do that ...

Vasil Stanev

Yes, and as you see the glyph gets too many details to keep a small byte size. If the client has to wait every time his OS loads the font, that can have dire consequences for your sales.

There may be someone who has automated the texturing. Search the web for Vassil Kataliev. But his services ain't exactly cheap, because they are pro, AFAICS. 

https://www.kateliev.com/

James Puckett

There are tools for distressing graphics with Photoshop and Illustrator that will help on Creative Market. https://creativemarket.com/search?q=distressed+action