Font Shop has quietly released a nifty new online font creation tool called FontStruct. FontStruct is an Ajax-y (really, is that actually a word?) web app that lets you go to town and try your hand at making your very own font which you can download in TrueType format. You can also make your font available for download by other users, as well as browse and download fonts created by other users.
Full review after the jump.
The interface seems a bit limiting at first blush, but if the library of user created fonts is any indication, you can actually do an amazing variety of work with the palette they give you. Font Shop has done a wonderful job of giving you a very powerful set of tools that are still easy to learn and accessible. I found the interface to be a tab bit sluggish at times, but given how new the tool is, I would expect a few kinks to be worked out over time and nothing about the site performance made it overly difficult to work with. (Pretty great actually, considering that they haven’t even officially announced the website yet!) The gallery feature will only become more valuable over time as new members add their own creations to it. As of the writing of this post there are 340 fonts to choose from which is a really nice selection already. Overall, FontShop has put together a really great new tool and I can’t wait to dig into it’s deeper features.
the FontStruct interface
my first attempt at creating a font
Cheatsheet
One thing that will noticeably speed up your FontStruct workflow is making use of the keyboard shortcuts. We’ve compiled a little cheat-sheet of the most vital ones here for future reference. (Go here for a full reference)
B Pen (Hold Shift for Eraser)
E Eraser (Hold Shift for Pen)
R Rectangle
V Pointer (Hold Shift to Add to Selection)
N Line
H Hand
Edit
Shift (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + Z Undo
Shift (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + Y Redo
Shift (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + C Copy
Shift (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + X Cut
Shift (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + V Paste
Select
Shift (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + A Select All
Shift (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + D Select None
