I always like to try new things and recently stumbled on the SVG Font Editor in Inkscape. I've never made a font before, but decided it would be fun to have one full of quilt blocks which I could playfully use as part of my Quilt Design a Day process. I chose some basic shapes and set to work creating the characters for my first font. I came up with 94 designs which correspond to basic keyboard characters.
I encoded the characters and converted it to a TrueType font and have made it available for everyone to play with. You can download it from the badskirt website at:
http://www.badskirt.com/fonts/badskirtbasics.zip
As this is my first font, please be gentle and treat me with kids' gloves. It's been tested on Macs, Windows and Linux boxes in several apps including Word, Gimp, Inkscape, OpenOffice, Photoshop and Illustrator. It appears to be working well, but may show up under font11521 instead of Badskirt Basics for some users. I'm still working that bit out, but you can play with it now.
The character set is designed full-bleed. That means each block fills a full character. To add space between, you can use kerning and leading. (Thanks for the great tip, Jason!) Another way to use it would be to load it into a vector program and then convert back into paths as the starting point for a quilt design.
The best idea though came from Jane who suggested it could be our top quilters' secret language.
So go ahead and grab a copy. I can't wait to see what you come up with.
This is awesome Amy but when I click on your link it says the link is faulty. I would love this so am hoping the link can be fixed. Awesome idea!!
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry about that! I had reuploaded the font and forgot to rename it! It should be working for you now.
Delete*Gasp* How much more brilliant can this be? I see myself starting a quilt blog, featuring photos of poster-sized printouts displayed on nearby park benches:D Thank you for sharing the font, Amy -- you can bet I'll be using it!
ReplyDeleteI think it's so awesome Amy! Thanks for sharing it with our group and here! Can't wait to see how it will help me in my designing process. :)
ReplyDeleteNext up: I should write a decoder. Feed it an image, and it will tell you what it says. :) I wonder how hard that would be?
ReplyDeleteYou know I think this is the most brilliant thing ever. I'm so glad you joined QDAD!!!!
Wow, so cool! Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteWhat is this..Sorry, I don't get it. Explanation please.
ReplyDeleteThis is a font that you can install on your computer. Instead of letters appearing as they do with Helvetica or Arial, the characters are quilt blocks. You could think of it a quilt block version of Dingbats or WIngbats. For those people doing quilt design a day, it's a fast way to mock up basic quilt designs.
Deletelove it, thank you! may do names of family members for personal pillows. so dang cute.
DeleteYou are very cool! Thanks for creating and sharing this. I only just installed your font, and I need to play, but I look forward to playing with it.
ReplyDeleteLove it, will enjoy playing.
ReplyDeleteFantastic!
ReplyDelete