Fig. A: Write each letter in the appropriate box with
a black felt pen. The tick marks on the sides of each box
represent the baseline.
Fig. B: Scan your template in, and then make adjustments
as necessary using an image editing tool such as
Photoshop.
Materials
» Computer
» Printer
» Scanner
» Printer paper
» Adobe Photoshop or other image
editing tool (optional)
» Black felt-tip pen
1. Print the template.
Go to
fontifier.com and print out the template.
Photograph by Natalie Zee Drieu
2. Start writing.
Using a black felt-tip pen, fill in the letters or
symbols in each box, making sure to give each letter
breathing room on the sides (Figure A). The little
tick marks on the sides of each box should be considered the baseline for each letter. Just remember,
the thicker your pen is, the thicker your font weight
will be. Using a pen that’s too thin will result in a very
lightweight font that could be hard to read.
3. Scan in the template.
On the scanner, scan in the entire template,
making sure to include the outer border. Save the
graphic as a .gif, .jpeg, .png, or .tiff file at 72, 75,
or 100dpi.
4. Make little fixes in Photoshop
(optional).
I spend most of my time typing rather than writing,
and if your handwriting is like mine — characters
aren’t even or well aligned — you can do some
modifying in Photoshop or use your preferred image
editing tool.
To do this, bring the scanned template into Photoshop and use the line rulers to match the baseline
marks of each letter. Once you have those set, you
can align each letter to the bottom of your line ruler,
or scale a letter so that it looks even with the others
(Figure B).
5. Upload your template.
Once you’ve got all the letters and symbols to your
liking, upload your template to Fontifier. You’ll be
able to preview the font and a sample sentence to
see if you like it before you purchase.
