Making a Handwriting Font with Calligraphr and FontForge

I have been reading about font design and evolving font technologies for a while, and I finally succumbed to the lure of making a font. I decided for this first foray to try to replicate my handwriting. This is the result!

In this video I walk through the process, from using Calligraphr to capture the glyphs to using FontForge to fine-tune the spacing.

I took the time to write out the common characters multiple times, so there are plenty of variations of each one (called “contextual alternatives” in font lingo). I also added some extra punctuation, math symbols, and common European language characters.

Here are some fancy character examples:

“This is a quoted phrase.”

Here's some code:

let x = 0;
if (x < 10) {
  // do something
}

And how about some nonsensical math:

δχ/δt = 10; ∀a∈A, ∃x s.t. …