Mixfont Update - seeking a designer to help complete an AI-generated font

ericlu
ericlu Posts: 21
in Font Technology
Hi Typedrawers,

It's been a minute since I've posted. Since I last shared about Mixfont, the site has grown to over 25,000 registered users from all over the world who have created tens of thousands of unique fonts. Mixfont is now the #1 result for AI font generator on major search engines. I've received countless messages of support from users who have been able to create their own imagined font designs from scratch, and the API has been integrated in several popular note-taking apps, enabling people to start typing in their own handwriting from just a sample image. Some of my work has also been cited in the Smithsonian Magazine, Dezeen, and Fast Company. 

I'm super grateful for the support and feedback that I've gotten from the Typedrawers community. Thanks to the feedback I've gotten here I've been able to continually improve the service and make it more helpful for thousands of designers from around the world. 

In the vein of this work, I'm currently looking to commission a type designer to help me take an AI-generated font over the finish line so that I can submit it to Google Fonts. I tried this initially with a font called Gothic Gumdrop and the font was tentatively accepted, but still contained certain spacing and outline issues. I'm looking to work with a typographer or font designer to help take a font like this over the finish line. The work would involve polishing the details of an AI generated font, fixing spacing and outline issues, and manually adjusting or redesigning any glyphs that need to be improved. It can be Gothic Gumdrop, or use a completely different AI-generated font as a starting point. My goal is to prep a submission that meet the quality standards of the Google Fonts team so that the "world's first AI-generated font" can be submitted and accepted to the library. 

I realize that this is an unusual request, but I thought I would start in this forum to see if there would be anyone here who would be interested in partnering on this project. I have the budget to make this happen - please let me know if you or someone you might know might be interested. 

Thank you and look forward to working together.
Eric
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Comments

  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,185
    Why not put that money/effort into improving Mixfont in the same areas?

    There already exist auto-spacing, auto-kerning and especially outline-optimization systems that do better.
  • Simon Cozens
    Simon Cozens Posts: 872
    I tend to use Yofont for all my AI font generation needs these days. It does everything Mixfont does, and it also generates Hebrew, Arabic, Devanagari and CJK as well.
  • Kasper Pyndt
    Kasper Pyndt Posts: 41
    You do realise that if a designer manually adjusts and optimises the font, then it’s no longer “the world’s first AI generated font” - right?
  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 21
    Thomas Phinney said:
    Why not put that money/effort into improving Mixfont in the same areas?

    There already exist auto-spacing, auto-kerning and especially outline-optimization systems that do better.
    I have been working on improving these areas (with input from helpful folks here) but it's still difficult for the technology to create fonts that are on level of quality of professionally designed fonts with respect to all the details in one single prompt / pass. I think it's like AI in other areas where it can provide a quick and helpful starting point but still requires review. Hence seeking to partner with a human designer. 

    @yanone
    When exactly did I say AI is doing 90% of the work? All aspects of the font design are an equally important part of the work, and because of that I'm trying to get it right. This is partnership work submission, where AI will generate the first draft and then I'm hoping to work with a human designer to turn this drafted design into a production ready font. 

    @Kasper Pyndt
    It's still an AI generated font but it will be created in partnership with human designers. For the right collaborator I think this could be an interesting project to contribute to, as of yet there hasn't been a submission like this to any large professional font library. I believe this can be a big milestone to be a part of. 

    @SCarewe @John Hudson
    This isn't a troll post. I'm seeking a collaborator on this and I wanted to see if I could involve this community first because I wish to build this in collaboration with this community of designers. It's fine if you're not interested but it's my right to ask in case someone else might be. I'm determined to make this happen so I think it's better if I can do it with someone here who understands the voices and concerns of the type design community. 




  • Kris Sowersby
    Kris Sowersby Posts: 56
    What is your budget to complete this work?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,185
    edited September 17
    This is definitely a slippery-slope question.

    Going the other way, synthesizing one or more glyphs on the fly, from a multi-axis variable (or MM) font, in a specific style so as to match the style of the host font, is something that was done as far back as 1999. https://patents.google.com/patent/US6760029B1/en  (Yes, that’s me in there. I contributed the idea, heuristics and made the initial MM font from which euro glyphs were generated.) This approach was used by Adobe in their OpenType library conversion to add customized “symbol substitution” glyphs to fonts other than Adobe Originals, and also euro symbols for a more limited number of fonts.

    Laurence Penney and Irene Vlachou came up with what seems to be pretty much the same approach for adding Greek to existing fonts with FauxFoundry (https://www.fauxfoundry.com/).

    I would very much rather see the AI efforts go into essentially a better AI version of that. The “prompt” being not a text description, but at least in part actual glyphs as inputs. The number of input glyphs could be highly variable, anywhere from say 1% to 99%+ of the desired output glyph set. Different people might have different preferences for how big an input set to start with, what glyphs they wanted generated, and how much they wanted to revise the AI-generated content. One might cycle through repeated steps of output, revise and feed back, more output.
  • Adam Twardoch
    Adam Twardoch Posts: 523
    https://yofont.com/ is probably the best AI font generator ever to exist. Best that had existed, and I think best out of all there to follow. And it’s among the best AI generators of anything. 
  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 21
    edited 4:36AM
    @Thomas Phinney
    That's an awesome patent! Thank you for sharing the link, so cool to see that aspect of your work. 

    I have been working on that workflow - in fact this summer I created a Glyphs plugin (https://github.com/schriftgestalt/glyphs-packages/pull/199) that takes the glyphs as inputs, and using the Mixfont model converts them into editable glyphs (it can also expand upon the already created glyphs). I'm hoping to get this plugin accepted to Glyphs btw (in case anyone here might be able to help with that). The goal is exactly the workflow you're describing - use actual glyphs as input to either expand or improve, and be able to iterate on that. 

    @Kris Sowersby
    I'm following Thomas' excellent article as a guide on the cost of developing new fonts for setting a budget for this project. I believe that the comp should be competitive - if you are seriously interested please send me a DM with some samples of work and we can go from there. 

    @Simon Cozens @Adam Twardoch
    YoFont does look like a legitimate competitor. I would love your feedback on anything specific that you like about their product over Mixfont or any ways that Mixfont could improve. I am here in this forum so that I can learn and improve the product. 

    I'm not sure how and when I became the bad guy, but I do care deeply about getting this project right. Whether or not this submission to Google Fonts can truly count as a "world's first" might be subject to different interpretations, but I believe that it will be a notable milestone regardless. 




  • Simon Cozens
    Simon Cozens Posts: 872
    edited 7:15AM
    ericlu said:
    @Simon Cozens @Adam Twardoch
    YoFont does look like a legitimate competitor. I would love your feedback on anything specific that you like about their product over Mixfont or any ways that Mixfont could improve.

    Sorry, this time we're trolling. YoFont is bloody terrible. The fact that you can't see that is a problem. Or, in the context of this discussion, the problem.

    The "Arabic" and "Devanagari" it generates is just completely wrong; glyphs in the wrong slots, the output is incoherent and unreadable, and the style variation is minimal (the Arabic is just Microsoft Arial Arabic with a few small outline variations) and utterly disconnected to the Latin. The only reason that YoFont can claim to generate a complete Arabic or Devanagari font is purely the Dunning-Kruger effect on the part of its creator - the fact that the creator of YoFont has no idea what Arabic or Devanagari actually looks like, but has been convinced by their AI companion that the job is good enough for production. And I suspect that you think it's a legitimate competitor only because you have no idea what good Arabic or Devanagari looks like either.

    Turns out it's really easy to generate a production quality font if you have no idea what a production quality font looks like. Bears thinking about, doesn't it?

  • SCarewe
    SCarewe Posts: 98
    edited 9:07AM
    ericlu said:

    I'm not sure how and when I became the bad guy
    Well. Your unwavering motivation to build a product that everybody here is telling you is harmful, unhelpful and misguided. You don't seem to listen to any of the concerns, as all points made in the numerous threads are just the same ones, over and over again.

    Please just stop for a moment and take the advice of the type enthusiasts here to heart. I really, really recommend you read Simon's posts and reflect on them. He means well and is giving you all the tools to come out of this a better person.

    A note on your Glyphs plugin: the fact that you don't see how terrible the output is (even just from a design perspective) is exactly what people here are telling you about.

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