Our creative studio’s font project

The first stage was to each come up with a concept. We developed our own creative briefs, determining where the font will be used (e.g. digital or print), what type of font it would be (decorative display or body copy) and why we want to bring it to life. This gave us direction and something to measure our effectiveness against.

We then spent some time creating moodboards, drawing inspiration from other fonts we liked the style of. My goal was to create something as playful as possible while also making sure it was legible.

The first step in designing the font was to draw out the letters on paper, to bring to life the handmade style I was going for. Once I was happy with the style I’d drawn by hand, I scanned the letters into Illustrator and used the pencil tool to trace them digitally. I set the pencil tool fidelity to full accuracy to capture all the sharp lines and the imperfections that gave it personality. I then used a plugin called Fontself to convert these vector illustrations into a working font that could be typed out in all your standard computer programmes.

The great thing about creating your own font is being able to use it and design with it! I’ve spent a fair bit of time creating a type specimen that shows the ways in which I see the font being used. Check out my examples below:

This whole project was a great exercise in following a robust creative process, making sure to start with ideation and moodboarding before starting on the actual designs. We always follow this process for our clients so it was great to get the chance to also do it for ourselves.

I learned so much about type and how letters are formed over the course of this project. It also opened my eyes to how the simplest details can carry so much weight in the overall look and feel of your font.

If you want to try my new Homestile font for yourself, you can download it by clicking here.