FontStruct 2.0 Update
News | Rob Meek (meek) | May 12th, 2010
Dear FontStructors,
Apart from a few minor problems, things seem to have gone well with the update to FontStruct 2.0. Thanks to everyone who has made us aware of the various glitches that did occur. Looking in the gallery we’re already seeing some fantastic creations taking advantage of the new possibilities.
Today we updated the site again with a few bug fixes, and one powerful enhancement to the composite bricks feature. Let’s talk about the enhancement first.
Composite Bricks with padding
Composite bricks are wonderful — you can make new bricks out of the existing ones, and create complex forms without needing to work on a large grid. (If you don’t know what composite bricks are, or how to make them, see here.) But to make the composite bricks feature complete, you need to be able to create a composite that contains some “padding” or empty space on one side or the other, as in the above image. This was not possible in the initial release of FontStruct 2.0. Now it is.
Let’s look at an example. Say you want to create this C:
Using the standard composite brick feature, and flipping it’s quite easy to get this far:
But it’s not obvious how to finish the C on the right. How do you get that little quarter circle floating in the corner of a grid-square? The first step is to create a new composite brick, using square bricks where you want empty space to be. These square bricks are your padding:
You should end up with this in “My Bricks” (the new composite is highlighted in yellow):
Now click on the new brick while holding-down the shift-key. A popup appears:
Click on the square bricks to delete them. Swipe-off the popup once you’re done and you should see the brick you need in “My Bricks”:
Now you can finish your letter:
– This simple enhancement greatly increases the number and variety of shapes you can create with the composite bricks feature.
Other Changes
Apart from a range of unglamorous and hopefully invisible bug-fixes, one noticeable change is a new set of default avatars to replace the old grey question mark. Now anyone who doesn’t choose their own avatar will be assigned one from a selection of 104 colorful, FontStructed avatars created using afrojet‘s wonderful Playtime Pattern Motifs. I looked at a number of pattern fonts to use for this, including the amazing fs pattern team and Frodo7‘s vertiginous Vortices, but Playtime Motifs seemed the perfect fit in this case:
SpamStruct
Unfortunately we’ve discovered a large number of people(?) using their profile pages for spam. We’re in the process of closing accounts which are doing this. This is an automated process, so in the very unlikely event that you are suddenly shut out of FontStruct, let us know and we’ll reopen your account (presuming you’re a genuine FontStructor). If you’re advertising any medications, health and beauty products, or similar on your profile page, you may want to remove those links now …
Happy FontStructing.
