So how can you become one of the new font elite? Let's start by making a font.

First of all, obtain yourself a copy of that amazing fonting tool, Macromedia Fontographer. Everbody uses Fontographer. Everybody. That's because there really is no other program that comes close in the fontmaking category. You can draw your font from scratch using the built-in tools, or you can make the characters in a bitmap or EPS graphics program and paste them in. Fontographer comes for both Mac and PC, and both versions can generate TrueType, bitmap, and PostScript fonts for both platforms. Uh-oh. Don't tell me you don't now what the differences between TrueType, bitmap, and PostScript! Oh well - for those of you left behind, bitmap fonts are the oldest fonts, prevalent back in the beginning of digital typography till a couple years ago, and still used (though not very darn much) today. The thought behind bitmap fonts was that each character was actually a picture, made up of black and white dots called pixels, just like most computer graphics. Each different size for a font had its own file, which contained a picture of what each character looked like at that size. So to use a font, you would usually have installed several font files, one for size 12, one for size 18, one for size 24, and so on. The problem was, what if you wanted the font at a size you didn't have. For example, let's say you needed Geneva to print at 100 pt, but your largest font was Geneva 72 pt. The program displaying the font would then simply enlarge the 72 pt font to the dimensions needed to display at 100 pt. The result was ugly jagged edges due to pixelation at sizes not supported. To fix this, two standards, came out, based on Adobe's EPS technology. Both used mathematical representations of lines and curves to draw their fonts, called vectors, rather than pixels. (Graphics based on that concept are called vector graphics, and graphics based on pixels are called bitmap graphics) The result was fonts that could be scaled to any size and always look the same. Also, they only needed one file to install. For viewing on computer screens, there were TrueType fonts, and for printing, PostScript fonts. Today virtually all typefaces use the TrueType and PostScript standards, so you will probably want to generate the fonts in these formats.

After you have played around with Fontographer for a couple minutes, you'll probably want to graduate from its sparse drawing tools to make your own font masterpiece. If you just want to draw your font out on a piece of paper first, go for it. (Secret insiders tip: use a black felt tip marker/pen for best results) Now scan that sucker into Adobe Photoshop (Mac/PC), ColorIt (Mac), PaintShop Pro (PC) or any other bitmap graphics program you feel is worthy, somewhere between 150 and 300 dpi. Clean up your scanning job, and make sure your characters look the way you'd like them to. Now save it, (TIFF format sounds good) and rest up a bit, because the decision-making part comes up next

Got that done? Good. Now you have a couple different options.

You can copy the letters individually from where they are now and paste them into Fontographer one at a time, then use its Auto Trace (Shift-Ctrl-T) feature to turn that bitmap drawing of a letter into a vector representation of the letter. Now that your letter is based on vectors rather than nasty old pixels, you can turn it into a cool looking font. But I assume you want to put the other 25 letters in too, and maybe a number or two. Copy and paste those in, (In other words, open Photoshop, select only the black part of the letter with your handy magic wand tool, press Ctrl-C to copy, open Fontographer, double-click on the letter you want to paste to bring up its editing window, and press Ctrl-V) auto-trace them, and you've got a font, almost ready to go. Save it as a .fog Fontographer file for safekeeping.

Grab yourself a good bitmap->EPS converter, like Adobe Streamline (Mac/PC, or Corel OCR-TRACE (Mac/PC, Included in CorelDraw), and a good EPS graphics program, like Adobe Illustrator (Mac/PC), Macromedia Freehand (Mac/PC), or CorelDraw (Mac/PC). Now open up your bitmap->EPS converter, and convert that TIFF file you just made into a great-looking vector graphic, ready to be fontified. Close that program, and open your EPS/PostScript/Vector graphics program. There you will be able to make any more changes you can think of to your letterforms, and practice your skills in this strange new world of curves, strokes, and fills. Once you have your font ready, you can open Fontographer, and paste each letter into its appropriate box. (In other words, select your letter in Illustrator, press Ctrl-C to copy, open Fontographer, double-click on the letter you want to paste to bring up its editing window, and press Ctrl-V) Once you have all the characters in, save it as a .fog Fontographer file.

So there you go. Zip or BinHex that font up with a ReadMe file extolling your fabulous fontmaking feats, and put it up on the web. Now you just have to sit back and wait as the glamorous life of an alphabetician comes to you. In the meantime, go hang out in trendy coffeehouses and speak very loudly about how much you love being a world-renowned typographer. You deserve it.