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February 27, 2008 3:18 PM PST

Hands-on: Fontifier

by Lindsey Turrentine
  • 8 comments

I am absolutely in love with Fontifier, a simple service that creates a font from your own handwriting. Fontifier isn't new--Daily Candy covered it in 2005 and I saw it on the Craft blog--but in my opinion, good, ol' fashioned handwriting needs all the help it can get. (By, of course, making it less old fashioned.)

In about 5 minutes yesterday, I printed out Fontifier's template, scratched in my own versions of all the letters and symbols in a typical font, then scanned and uploaded the sheet. I expected that once I uploaded my alphabet, I'd have to wait a few minutes, hours, or even days to get my True Type font back. But after I paid $9 via credit card--ding!--there it was. I downloaded the file, dragged it to the Fonts folder in my Control Panel, opened Microsoft Word and started typing.

The result (below) doesn't exactly mimic my handwriting. I don't usually write with such a thick pen and I typically keep my hand a little straighter. (The vertical unevenness comes from writing my scanned letters at different heights in the template boxes, so I can only blame myself.) Typing with my font in Word, text looks nice at 18 points, but below that, my letters look a little jagged.

Still, I'm already dreaming up uses for my font--valentines! party invitations!-- and plan on creating a few more in weeks to come.

Fontifier test

My Fontifier font only sorta kinda looks like my real handwriting.

(Credit: Lindsey Turrentine/CNET Networks)
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