How to Create the Font You Love

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Have you ever seen a font on someone else’s project and loved it, but couldn’t find one to match it anywhere? Me too. But I found a great way to get create the font I love, and so can you.

Learning how to create the font you love is far easier than it sounds. It will take some time, but you got this. You can do this.

Finding the Font You Love

It’s so easy to scroll through Pinterest or Etsy and see so many completed projects that you want to copy. We all do it. Daily in my group, I have people posting for help to find a font they want to use. So here is the answer.

Let’s pretend you found this farmhouse sign on Etsy and you want to make it for yourself. Once you get into Cricut Design Space you realize that you can’t find the perfect font. Some are close, but not perfect.

First, you will need a few free tools to make this easier for yourself. Start by downloading NexusFont. I use this on a computer, but I think you can get it on a tablet or something like it. It is a Font Manager. Apple Macs have one already installed.

This will automatically add all the fonts you already have installed on your device, and install automatically any new ones you download. Are you unsure how to download new fonts to your computer or tablet, I have instructions for that. Just click on either computer or tablet to get the blog post. There is a video as well. I like video instructions, don’t you?

NexusFont will automatically populate your downloaded fonts. Once that is done, open the Font Manager. Still confused about how to download NexusFont, follow the directions I give in my blog Organize Fonts with Font Manager.

How to Use Font Manager to Create the Font You Love

Once NexusFont is downloaded and populated, it will look like the image above. I have typed in the text I want to find. Now all I have to do is scroll down all the fonts I already have downloaded on my computer or iPad.

When you find one you think will work, jump over to Cricut Design Space and try it out. You should be able to search for that exact font within CDS. Click on the font box, and a search box will come up on the far right-hand side above all the fonts.

Type in that box the font you want to try and wait for it to come up in the list, then click on it. Does that look like the font you love? If not, continue your search in NexusFont. Keep doing this till you find one that will work. If you find nothing you like, let’s go to the next step.

Download Font from Dafont

The next thing I do is check Dafont for the font I love. Sometimes I will find the exact one and then sometimes I don’t. These are all free!

Go to Dafont.com and once you are there click on any font style in the top box. I clicked on Handwritten.

Once you click on any style of font, a few more options appear. That is why you need to click a style first. You can change the font style as often as you want after that.

In the Preview button, type in the word you are looking to find the perfect font match for. I would type in grandkids since that is the word we are trying to get the font for, then click submit.

Dafont has now populated all the Handwritten Style fonts using your word. This is perfect to find the font you want because you can see your text in each font.

Sometimes I am just looking for a certain letter. For instance, with the font for grandkids in the image we found, the G and K are very distinct. So I would type in just the letters G and K to find a font that matches those.

Once you find the font you want, follow these instructions to download the fonts to your computer or ipad. These are the same links from above, so if you have already followed those instructions, you will be fine.

When you download new fonts you want to use with your Cricut machine, you will need to Refresh Cricut first. This means, DON’T have your project all set up exactly as you want and then refresh. It may not save your project.

So when I know I will be adding new fonts, I wait to set up my project till I have my fonts installed. Cricut automatically populates the new fonts once it has been refreshed.

Creating the Font You Love

Now that we know the fonts we want to use and you have downloaded them to your computer or tablet and have refreshed CDS, let’s go use them. Hopefully you wrote them down so you remember what font is for what letters. I have to do that or I will forget for sure.

Type in the text you want. For me, it will be “grandkids”, but I want separate text boxes for the G, K, and S. So I will have 5 textboxes to create one word. This way we can use different fonts for each text box.

Then you can assign any font you want to each of these text boxes as I did in the image below. Of course, I am not going to use these fonts, but it was just to show you what I meant.

So the main parts of the word grandkids, minus the G, K, and S, will be for me Sweetyhearts font. Be sure to fix the cursive letter spacing so they are all touching as cursive writing will be natural. After I get them placed exactly right, I drag a box around them in CDS and weld them. This way they are fixed forever just like that. I can enlarge then or make them smaller as one unit now.

Next find the font you want for G, K, and S. I wrote them down so I have them all straight in my mind. Then you are ready to put them all together. Click on the G in CDS and then assign it a font. Do the same for K and S. Your new downloaded fonts should be in there, if they aren’t, refresh CDS.

You can make these text letters bigger or smaller according to the image you are trying to copy. Just play with it.

Now it’s time to find the Glyphs that make the font fabulous.

Create the Font You Love with Glyphs

Glyphs are the curlie q’s you see on the beginning and ends of letters. In the sign we are trying to copy, the G has a glyph on the front end and the K has one on the back end and so does the S.

We will need a Character Map to find the perfect Glyph to create the font you are after. If you don’t have a Character Map or don’t know what it is, follow this blog post. Don’t worry…it’s easy.

Now that you have your Character Map downloaded, it’s time to find the perfect Glyphs. All your downloaded fonts with Glyphs will be uploaded into your Character Map. You can use any font Glyphs, so don’t hem yourself in by thinking it has to be the font you are currently using.

I start by looking for swash fonts. It sounds funny, but I am always surprised how many I actually have in my fonts. For instance, I found a font called Millea Swash that is all Glyphs with no letters at all. The reason I look for these first is that the copy and paste step doesn’t always work with Glyphs. It can be a bit aggravating.

But with a swash font, you can find the glyph you want to create the font you love, and then find the letter associated with it and use that in Cricut without worrying if the glyph will transfer or not. Once you start to use these you will understand what I mean. Here’s how I do it…

Search for Millea Swash in your fonts. Then click a new text box, choose Millea Swash in the fonts, and start typing abcdef (literally, type this). What will appear are glyphs, not letters (look at the image above). To find the one you want type abcdef and on and on, all the while saying your alphabet in your head or out loud as I do so you know what letter corresponds to the glyph you want. Then delete the text box, open a new one, and just put the one letter for your glyph. That was so easy!

If you don’t have a swash font, that’s ok. Most, not all fonts have a few glyphs. For instance, the I Love Glitter font, as shown above, has several great glyphs that can be used with any font. So look at all the fonts for glyphs.

As you scroll through your fonts, click on each of them and then scroll through all the letters that the font will make. If you find one you like, click on the icon, then look to the right and there should be a copy icon on the bottom right corner(see the image above). Click that and take it over to CDS. Open a new text box and paste it there (either right click your mouse to paste or control V will paste too). If all works right, your glyph should show up. But as I said earlier, not all of them work like they are supposed to.

So just play with all that until you find the perfect Glyph for your text. You may need to flip it or make it smaller or bigger, but you control this, so it’s ok.

Here is my finished product. I think I like it, but I can play with it more if I want.

That is how to create the font you love without spending a fortune on paid fonts. I hope this helps. Watch the video if you get lost, it may be clearer. As always, if you need extra help, please reach out to us on the FaceBook page, Addicted to Cricut.