Brick by Brick, the FontStruct Blog

The FontStruct Blog

Introducing the FontStruct Maker

News | | January 26th, 2017

maker

Dear FontStructors,

A font design only begins to reveal its true character and potential when it’s put to use; when you start to design with it; and especially when you take it off the screen and print with it.

A new tool from FontStruct, the “FontStruct Maker”, is designed to offer a quick and simple way to transfer a FontStruction onto a real world thing – specifically clothing and accessories; for example T-Shirts, mugs, bags or device covers. There’s no need to install a font, or any design software. You don’t even need to sign in to FontStruct to use it!

Learn more in the video (best in full screen, and you’ll need the audio turned up):

With the Maker you can take any FontStruction (license permitting), create your own design with it, and then immediately upload that design to the Spreadshirt printing platform where it can be printed onto any one from scores of products.

We think this is the world’s speediest type-to-tee design system. Click on any of the T-Shirt icons on the gallery pages, or the “Make” buttons on any FontStruction homepage to try it out. There’s also a dedicated help page available.

Level Rebel on a Tee

Image shows Level Rebel by four printed on a T-Shirt using an image generated in the FontStruct Maker.

 

Happy FontStructing!

 

UPDATES to the video:

Please note that a few small things have changed since we made the video. For example, you can now adjust the horizontal as well as the vertical position of the attribution line. We’ve also doubled the point size of the attribution line to improve legibility.

Note also that printing on dark fabric or other materials is more challenging than printing onto pale and white things. Spreadshirt did an excellent job of printing onto the black T-Shirt pictured above, but generally a paler ground will produce more consistent and predictable results.

 


16 Comments

  1. brynda1231

    Cool…

    brynda1231 — January 26, 2017 #

  2. Yautja

    What an exciting surprise!

    It would be nice to see numeric values for the sliders.

    Yautja — January 26, 2017 #

  3. Rob Meek (meek)

    @yautja – I thought about that but I’m not sure what the units would be in all cases. For the moment, you need to get the hang of using the arrow keys together with the sliders for precision. Maybe I’ll rethink it. Thanks to you for the music in the video!

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 26, 2017 #

  4. brynda1231

    @Meek, I would want to see more unicode characters so Im not restricted to Plane 0.

    brynda1231 — January 26, 2017 #

  5. beate

    The Marker is a very great opportunity to advertise fonts built with fontstruct. Rob, thanks a lot for the amazing evolution of fontstruct (Kerning and many more…) ! 
    Cheers.

    beate — January 26, 2017 #

  6. ETHproductions

    Wow, thanks for this amazing new feature! I’ve always wanted to create my own FontStruct merchandise, and now I’m seriously considering it….

    The Maker, however, doesn’t seem to work on all fonts. I’ve tried it with fs lost on both Firefox and Chrome, but it always shows up as Times New Roman. I have one private font which seems to glitch the editor entirely; I can type in the textbox and edit the other attributes, but nothing ever shows up in the image. I hope you can get this sorted out soon.

    Again, thank you for your constant improvements to all areas of FontStruct! And of course, thanks to Spreadshirt for helping with this particular feature. :-)

    ETHproductions — January 26, 2017 #

  7. Rob Meek (meek)

    I’ll look into it!

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 26, 2017 #

  8. Rob Meek (meek)

    @ETH fs lost is working now. Let me know if you find other FontStructions displaying the same problem.

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 27, 2017 #

  9. ETHproductions

    Thank you very much! Yesterday I discovered four other fonts that don’t seem to work: Monochromaticism Serif, Hipster, fs Pattern, and an unpublished font of mine (I can send you the id if you’d like). But searching the What’s New page, the Top Downloads page, and my private font page, I haven’t found any more. Perhaps these are the only ones that aren’t working?

    On a side note, Ariapenciroman seems to crash my Windows laptop whenever I open it in the Maker in Firefox. I suspect it may have something to do with Firefox trying to use too much RAM; my laptop only has 4 GB. Chrome, however, doesn’t seem to use more than 100 extra MB even on Dioptical, the worst memory-hogging fontstruction I’ve found thus far. I guess I’ll use the Maker in Chrome from now on :-)

    ETHproductions — January 27, 2017 #

  10. ETHproductions

    I’ve gone through all of my public fonts and found that fs monopixel regular and fs intrepid don’t work either. Weirdly, the problem doesn’t seem to occur in clones of the original fontstructions…

    ETHproductions — January 27, 2017 #

  11. Rob Meek (meek)

    @ETH thanks. The problem seems to be with fonts which have duplicate glyphs – this should never happen, but seemingly there are a few thousand FontStructions in the DB with this issue. Cloning is probably a good way to get rid of these duplicates. I’ll try and fix this problem for all fonts, sometime next week.

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 27, 2017 #

  12. four

    What a great new tool and what an honour to have two glyphs feature on that t-shirt! Love the animated fontstruct logo in the video, the music and the voice-over.

    four — January 27, 2017 #

  13. MadSheep3

    Alas, Spreadshirt cannot deliver into my country.

    MadSheep3 — January 28, 2017 #

  14. Rob Meek (meek)

    @MadSheep3 Sorry to hear that!

    Rob Meek (meek) — January 28, 2017 #

  15. elmoyenique

    WOW WOW WOW!

    elmoyenique — February 10, 2017 #

  16. funk_king

    Here’s wishing FS a happy (and very belated) birthday! April 1st was the big day and although I didn’t recognize the event at the time, I want to thank Mr. Meek, FontShop and staff for providing us with an incredible 9 – yes 9! – years of this most incredible thing called FontStruct. Somehow I stumbled across your site shortly after it launched. That remains one of the most happiest and life changing days of my life. Ok. Ok. Well, to me it was a big deal – being able to quickly and easily creates font? A dream come true. I wish you continued success and thanks again! 

    funk_king — April 12, 2017 #