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Making a title, ornament or single-line font with Pendrilo Type

Pendrilo Type can make more than handwriting fonts. Besides a handwriting font, you can make a series title font, an ornament font or a single-line craft font. Each one is a font file you install and use like any other.

Choosing the kind of font

In Pendrilo Type, choose File → New. It asks what kind of font to make. Pick one of these:

  • Series title font: for a title made from lettering you drew or imported.
  • Ornament font: for flourishes, dividers, frames and corner pieces that you type with the keyboard.
  • Single-line craft font: for one-line letters used with Cricut pens, pen plotters, laser engraving and embroidery.

You can name the font at any time in Font Details….

Making a series title font

You can add the letters in two ways.

To bring in lettering you already have:

  • 1. Choose Font → Import Lettering….
  • 2. Pick your PNG, JPG or SVG files. Name each file after the letter it shows: A.png for a capital A, a lower.png for a lowercase a, A alt.png for an alternate, and TH.png for a pair of letters joined together.

To draw the letters instead, click a letter in the grid and choose Draw It.

You can also drop PNG, JPG or SVG files onto the window to add them to the font.

For an all-capitals title font, tick Capitals only (lowercase keys type capitals too).

Making an ornament font

  • 1. Click Add Artwork… and choose the flourishes, dividers, frames and corner pieces you want.
  • 2. Each piece is typed with a single key: a, b, c and so on.
  • 3. The first five pieces can also be typed with the standard ornament characters ❦ ❧ ☙ ✦ ⁂.

To see which key types which ornament, click Print Key Map…. It makes a PDF you can print or keep for reference.

Making a single-line craft font

A single-line font is built from letters drawn as single lines, so tools that trace a line can use it. When you export it, Pendrilo Type can write:

  • an SVG font, for Inkscape's Hershey Text, plotters and engravers;
  • a Single-line JSON file, for Threadline and laser and CNC apps;
  • OTF and TTF files, which still show up in Cricut Design Space.

Checking and installing the font

Before you use the font, click Font Check. It looks the font over and reports anything that needs attention.

To use the font on this computer, click Install on This Computer. It installs without needing administrator rights, and the font then appears in Word, Canva, Cricut Design Space and Pendrilo Formatter. If those programs were open, restart them to see it.

Exporting the font files

Click Export… and choose a folder. The formats are:

  • OTF: OpenType, for Windows and Mac apps. This is the recommended choice.
  • TTF: TrueType, for older apps and Cricut Design Space.
  • WOFF2: for websites.
  • UFO: the editable source, for other font editors.

For a single-line font, Export also adds the SVG font and the Single-line JSON file.

If Font Check found problems, Export tells you and offers Export Anyway…. Look at the problems first if you can.

Under Font Details…, set Embedding to Installable (recommended) so the font can be embedded in PDFs, including KDP print PDFs.

For more about Pendrilo Type, see the Pendrilo Type help.