So apparently my laziness caused us to miss the first post on this, but our good friend Kyle Kabel wrote a post a while ago about Fontshop’s new application Fontstruct, and even though slate magazine beat us to the punch, the article is still interesting and relevant, so here it is.

FontStruct by FontShop

A little over two months ago, FontShop released a revolutionary new program called FontStruct, a web application for creating and sharing modular typefaces. Based on a basic square grid, users can build and edit their own typefaces from scratch using nothing more than a few blocks of various shape and size—all for the low price of $0! Users can post and share their ‘FontStructions’ with other members, while protecting their creations by picking from a range of Creative Commons licenses. [Or, if you were never one for sharing, you can bypass uploading to the gallery and keep your fonts to yourself.]

Though there has been much talk lately about the ‘democratization’ of type design with the advent of programs like Fontographer, that program still has a fairly steep learning curve, and requires quite a bit of instruction and/or experimentation to develop even the puniest of typefaces (not to mention its $350 price tag.) With FontStruct, a user can get the hang of the program within minutes, and have a fully functioning, downloadable typeface within an hour or two. And despite the simplicity of the interface and its inherent restrictions, the results are actually surprisingly varied and nuanced. From the relatively simple and expected—yet no less elegant—WPA Gothic and Eerostyle, to the incredibly ornate blackletter Struktur and 3-D display face Squint, to the non-typefaces Monkey Pizzaz and Fretboard, FontStruct allows for the construction of highly stylized, unique fonts with only a few deceptively simple tools.

It only makes sense that FontShop, the first digital type reseller founded in 1989 by Erik Spiekermann, and a forerunner in the age of digital type creation and distribution, would release a program equally innovative and universally available. Happy FontStructing!

http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/

By Kyle Kabel