Free Font Editors
Make your own fonts with these software and online services
Free Font Editors and Font Creation Software
Ever fancied making or designing your own fonts? The free software listed on this page allow you to create and edit your own fonts. Depending on the software, the program may allow you to create a TrueType, OpenType, Postscript, bitmap / raster font, or some other type of font.
For those who merely want to use free fonts rather than create their own fonts, please see the Free Fonts and Free Programmer's Fonts pages instead. In addition, if you only want to create bitmap or raster fonts, you may also want to take a look at the Free Resource Editors page, which may have some font editors to create and edit raster fonts.
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Free Font Designers and Editors
- BirdFont (Windows, macOS, Linux, etc)
The free version of BirdFont lets you create vector graphics which can be exported into TrueType (TTF) and monochrome SVG fonts. Your fonts must be released under the SIL Open Font licence. The editor works under Windows, macOS, Linux, OpenBSD and FreeBSD.
(Alternatively, if you are a software programmer, you can download the source code for the software, which the developers have released under the GNU General Public License, and compile it yourself. The program is written in the Vala programming language, so you will need a Vala compiler and supporting programs/files like a C compiler, the GLib 2 GNOME library, among other things. The self-compiled executable can be used to create fonts which you can release in any way you like.)
- FontForge: Free Font Editor (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc)
FontForge is an outline font editor that allows you to create and edit TrueType, OpenType, Postscript, CID-keyed, Multi-master, CFF, SVG, and bitmap (BDF, FON, NFNT) as well as many Macintosh font formats. It has many features, including the ability for you to add hints to your font, either manually or allowing the software to automatically generate hints. (Hints allow your fonts to still look good at small font sizes.) You can also use the program to convert fonts from one format to another. The software is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, VMS, and so on.
- Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType (AFDKO) (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)
The Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType is a set of open source command line tools for building OpenType fonts from PostScript and TrueType font data. (Note that it does not have a glyph editor, so if you are looking for that, this is not the program you want; try one of the other software listed on this page.) You will need to have a Python interpreter installed on your system to use the software. It is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
- Raster Font Editor (Windows)
This is a simple raster font editor that lets you create bitmap fonts. You can save your raster fonts as font resources (fnt), a resource script (rc), Windows bitmaps (bmp) and text files (txt). It is a Windows program.
- GNU Font Editor (Source only)
The GNU Font Editor is a graphical font editor derived from GIMP (see the Free Drawing and Painting Software, Image and Photo Editing Programs page for details of this). At present, it is available only in source form.
- DoubleType (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris)
DoubleType is an open source TrueType font editor for any system with a Java runtime system, which includes Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris.
- Type light (Windows)
Type light is an OpenType font editor that handles both .ttf (TrueType) and .otf (OpenType PostScript) fonts. Your fonts can have up to 65536 glyphs, which can be mapped to Unicode characters. Besides creating your fonts using the basic drawing tools, you can also edit TrueType and PostScript curves, convert fonts between TrueType and PostScript fonts, and enter basic font names, descriptions and parameters.
- Private Character Editor (Windows)
Did you know that Windows XP/Vista/7 comes with a font editor? You don't have to download anything. It's already on your computer if you're running Windows XP, Vista or 7. (I'm not sure about later versions.) To access it, just click the Run command from your Start menu. In the window that appears, type "eudcedit" (without the quotes) and click the OK button. The editor is primitive at best. Information about how to use it can be found in the Help menu of the program.
- Font Constructor (Mac OS X)
[Update: this program is no longer available.] Font Constructor is a Mac program that lets you construct your own font. The font can be exported as an .otf file (a PostScript TrueType font). At the time this review was written, the software does not support kerning or hinting.
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