Line25 is reader supported. At no cost to you a commission from sponsors may be earned when a purchase is made via links on the site. Learn more
The ability to create your own fonts is something that is highly valued in the graphic design industry. Over the last few years, the importance of font design has grown multifold. People want more customization and personalization in their designs, and fonts go a long way in providing that feeling. We see big corporations getting their own font style designs. Any niche that we pick up, be it traveling or industrial or space, we see hundreds of well-designed fonts to pick from.
While this high demand creates a good avenue for designers, it also presents a challenge for them to design better to stand out from the crowd. For this, you need to constantly keep working on your font designing skills. You should keep a tab on the industry to see the latest design trends that you can use. The best way is to keep practicing your skills on various tools. To help you with this, we have collated 12 tutorials to learn font design in Adobe Illustrator.
1. Step by Step guide for Font Creation in Illustrator:
For any new designers who are reading this list, this video is best suited if you wish to learn the very basics of font designing in Adobe Illustrator. It is a 42 minutes long video but has explained in good detail all that needs to be done to create amazing font styles. The best part about the video is that it assumes that you have very little knowledge about illustrators and thus patiently talks about all the tools that are being used. It uses a basic character set and then slowly designs every character. There are many tips and tricks hidden in the video, which can be a huge help to amateur designers to pick up from. It also talks about the various tools and plugins associated with illustrators that are helpful in this process. By the end of the video, you would have gained the knowledge of font creation, and then you can use the other text effects to create new font styles.
2. Creating a Perspective Design for Fonts:
One of the latest design trends in fonts is giving the font a 3D effect. This helps in making the text in your design stand out nicely. But it is not easy to create such a perspective effect in the fonts. You need sharp visualizing skills and strong computational abilities to come up with pixel-perfect 3D fonts. This tutorial is 15 minutes long and provides a detailed step-by-step guide for designers to understand and implement perspective building in the design. Basic knowledge of Illustrator will be useful before starting this tutorial, but by the end of the tutorial, you will be acing the 3D designing aspect of font building.
3. Creating Retro Text in Illustrator:
One of the best ways of giving your designs a good retro and vintage feel is to use a font that corresponds to it. This tutorial will help you learn how to create such retro fonts. The first part of the video talks about creating a multilayer text effect using the fill option in Illustrator. The same effect can be used to create a retro font or a vintage font style. Then it also shows how to use the stroke layer option and the other tools for creating a different form of font style. You can also see how to use various patterns to give the fonts a creative effect. Once you are done with the tutorial, you will know the various tools to use in font design and how to create amazing retro-style fonts.
4. Creating Modern Cyberpunk Style Fonts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVHf44n7oD4
There is a lot of usage of modern and Sci-fi font styles. They are widely used for games, videos, and even websites. Hence it is a good genre to explore for creating new font styles. This 11-minute video tutorial helps you create amazing modern cyberpunk style fonts in no time. It starts by setting up the workspace, creating guidelines, and then creating font elements. The good part is that it follows a very scientific approach in creating the fonts, and hence once you learn this method, you can create several variations of modern fonts. In the end, it also shows how with minor tweaks, you can further enhance existing fonts and make them look visually appealing.
5. Producing Stylish Typography:
One thing that is never going to go out of fashion in graphic designing is well-designed typography. Even before the advent of digital designing, designers have been coming up with highly creative typography made by their hands. Today the same technique is being used to create graffitis on the walls and buildings. This video tutorial is short and to the point. It shows how to use an existing font style and enhance it through effects in Illustrator in seven minutes. First, it teaches you how to add gradients and shadows to the text. In the end, it also sheds light on how to make the font look as if they are a bit three-dimensional.
6. Creating a Typeface Text:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAqw36AIumI
As a designer, you can create amazing new typefaces only when you are ready to stretch your imagination. This video tutorial is one good example of how you can be creative on fonts and make them visually appealing. In this 14 minute long video, we see how a basic font is taken and transformed. First, the font is converted into objects, then using various Illustrator tools, certain parts of the font are etched out. Next, a repeat pattern is created using the rectangle tool, and this pattern is then set up in the etched-out parts of the font style. Finally, using smart visualization and skillful use of tools like shadow, layering, and colors, the font is giving a very stylish finish.
7. Giving a Vintage Type Feel to Fonts:
Do you want to learn how to go design amazing vintage font styles that turn the clock back for the viewers, then this is a good tutorial to start with. It is just six minutes long but very fast-paced. Also, a basic knowledge of illustrator will help you understand the tutorial better. You can always choose the pause and play method so as to make sure that you learn everything. The video starts by selecting a basic font and then how it is transformed. First, the font is given a strong outline to make it look as if it has a shadow then a repeated lines pattern is created, which is inserted in this shadow. Finally, the font style is accompanied by the old style of lines and other elements to give it the perfect vintage feel.
8. Creating Graffiti Text in Illustrator:
Creating a graffiti-style font can be a very useful asset, especially if you are executing many print-based projects. Even for digital media, designing amazing graffitis can be very helpful for social media posts or website headers. This 15-minute video tutorial helps you transform a basic font style into creative graffitis. It uses the transform tool to give the font characters a lot more depth. Then the front face is changed in terms of colors. The right set of contrast colors can accentuate this design further. The middle part of the video is very interesting, where each character is cropped and outlined and treated differently to provide a highly authentic feel to the graffiti font.
9. Developing Line Filled Font Styles:
As a designer, you would have definitely come across some font styles which are made up of a series of lines. It could be straight or slanted lines or circles or some other patterns. Creating such a font style is not at all difficult if you can follow the steps as per the video tutorial. First, write your text and then create an outline of it. Then create the pattern you want to place inside the font. In this video, a pattern of circular lines is used. You can create any pattern of your liking. This pattern is then wrapped inside the text and then further fine-tuned by playing around with the stroke depth and the pattern. Once the font style is ready, you can also tweak the colors of the outline and the inside pattern or even go along without an outline to make the font look creative.
10. Creating a Handwritten Font in Illustrator:
This amazing video tutorial will help you understand how to design a font style right from scratch in Illustrator. It allows you to use your own handwriting as a base and develop a font style on it. The tutorial is over 15 mins long and covers a step-by-step guide for you to learn image tracing so as to know how to convert an image into a font. It nicely explains the importance of organizing your letters into grids. Using different brushes and tools, you can also refine your font style as per need. The good part about this tutorial is that it gives you the link to download all the assets that are needed in the tutorial.
11. Creating Calligraphy Style Fonts:
Apart from the routine serif style fonts, all designers always need good calligraphy font styles. These fonts can be used for creating handmade postcards or invitations or any other design that demands an old-school type feel. The tutorial is just 6 minutes long and does rely on the creative skills of the designer. It uses a calligraphic font as a base and then guides the viewers on how to go about recreating the entire font. Brush tools are used predominantly for this purpose. You can use the other tools to give finishing touches to the fonts. Once you have established a few characters, you can move ahead and quickly create all the character sets. As a designer, such types of fonts allow you to unleash your creativity. There is so much scope of improvisation that you can play along with the curves, the sharpness of the edges, and the depth of the stroke. The more time you spend on this, the more exclusive and creative font style you can create.
12. Giving the Cartoon Effect to Your Fonts:
As a designer, you will always get the design requirement of creating various types of effects on the fonts. One such common requirement is providing a cartoon effect on the text. Visually this may look like a simple task, but there is a lot of effort to create it. This 18-minute video shows in detail the tasks that you need to execute to create the cartoon effect. The good part about the tutorial is that it is well-detailed. This makes it easy for amateur designers to follow and learn. Also, the tutorial deals with many basic levels of illustrator usage, like creating mood boards or setting grids. Unlike many other tutorials, this one does provide all the working files free to download. This makes it easy for all as they work on the same files as shown in the video. Then step by step, it narrates how to achieve the effect using various illustrator tools. By the end of the video, you will have good knowledge about the outline effect, layers, brush tools, and other highly used tools.
Using fancy fonts in your design and designing new fonts are two very different things. The latter one needs a lot of creative visualization and software skills. It is always advisable to keep practicing your font skills to get better. Also, as a designer, you can pick up various genres and create font styles for them. Well-designed font styles not only have creative value but can also be commercialized by selling it on many available platforms.
