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/UC9KPKYG5cgytePrlv08jqqwAs we have just released, every comment is appreciated as we strife to make the tool tailored especial for you guys
Comments
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.