# Build a Better Font: An In-Depth Guide To Creating Fonts - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/build-a-better-font-an-in-depth-guide-to-creating-fonts/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Graphic Design · Solid intro · Rated 7 /10 # Build a Better Font: An In-Depth Guide To Creating Fonts Updated August 2026 Jamie Bartlett · Graphic designer and left-handed letterer Intermediate · 89 min An 89-minute walkthrough of one real font, start to finish, that treats kerning and spacing as seriously as the drawing. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fbuild-a-better-font-an-in-depth-guide-to-creating-fonts%2F663897497) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## From sketch to installable font The course follows one designer's actual production of a typeface called Milkbox, and that specificity is its greatest strength. Rather than abstract principles about letterforms, it opens with a practical planning stage: pick a classification (serif, sans-serif, or slab-serif), decide on weight and width, and choose how much of the character set to build. The teacher's own choice, an all-caps display font with numbers and limited punctuation, sets a scope that keeps the project achievable inside 89 minutes rather than sprawling into a full multi-weight family. The sketching lesson is where the method actually pays off. Instead of drawing 26 letters independently, the course builds outward from a handful of root shapes: an H establishes stroke width and proportion, an O establishes roundness, and later letters like D, Q, and C simply reuse those decisions. Unconventional touches, like curving the leg of the R and carrying that same curve into the K, get called out as deliberate choices that keep a geometric alphabet from looking mechanical. This is a genuinely useful way to think about type design, and it would help even someone who never opens Illustrator. The vectorizing stage splits into two paths depending on the desired look: Image Trace for a textured, hand drawn edge, or the pen tool for clean geometric shapes. The Image Trace walkthrough goes deep on the tradeoffs, tuning threshold and path values while watching the anchor point count climb, with a stated ceiling of around 500 points to keep the font readable by rendering engines. The pen tool alternative covers rounding corners to a consistent radius and aligning to the pixel grid, both of which matter for a font meant to look uniform at small sizes. ## Where the technical work happens The back half moves into Glyphs Mini, and this is where the course earns its "in-depth" label. Getting vector artwork correctly positioned relative to the baseline origin point, a step that trips up nearly anyone new to font software, gets a full explanation involving artboard repositioning and grid spacing settings. From there, the spacing groups system is the course's best idea: rather than manually setting bearings on 26 letters, related characters borrow their left and right side bearing values from a reference glyph, so adjusting the O later cascades to every rounded letter that references it. Kerning gets equally serious treatment, using loaded sample text strings designed to surface awkward letter pairs, plus kerning groups that mirror the spacing groups approach. The lesson is honest about the tedium of this stage and about when kerning groups backfire, showing a case where the K's group assignment causes unwanted side effects and has to be removed. The course is narrow by design. It never touches lowercase, multiple weights, or non-Latin characters, and a viewer chasing a text-heavy body font will not find that workflow here. The pacing also assumes comfort with Illustrator already, since tool navigation gets little explanation. Within its chosen scope, though, the arc from concept to exported, testable font file is complete and credible. The standout The spacing groups technique, where side bearings for round and flat-edged letters are set once on a reference glyph like O or H and then inherited by every related character, saves enormous manual repetition. ## What you will learn - · How to plan a typeface by choosing classification (serif, sans, slab), weight, width, and case coverage before drawing anything - · How to sketch consistent letterforms by building an alphabet outward from a few root shapes like H, O, and U - · How to convert sketches to vectors using either Illustrator's Image Trace panel or manual pen tool construction - · How to import vector glyphs into Glyphs Mini and correctly align them to the baseline origin - · How to set left and right side bearings using spacing groups inherited from reference letters - · How to kern letter pairs using sample text strings and export a working font file for use in Adobe apps Best for: A graphic designer or illustrator with working Illustrator skills who wants to turn hand drawn or vector letterforms into an actual installable font. Skip it if: Complete beginners to Illustrator, or anyone wanting a lowercase, multi-language, or variable font, since the whole project stays limited to a single-case display alphabet. Organization of Lessons Clarity of Instruction Audio & Video Quality Engaging Teacher [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fbuild-a-better-font-an-in-depth-guide-to-creating-fonts%2F663897497)