I kinda want to learn some typography. What are good resources to check out for that?
I usually just slap "Source Code Pro" and "Crimson Text" into everything that I do, but I think my stuff would feel more "polished" if I had a personal typeface (or multiple different ones), that I can use instead.
As someone who has gone down this road, besides resources the tools are important. Fonts are usually created with font creator programs, which vary in terms of how 'professional' they are and how they work. Some are free. Some aren't.
Personally, I only needed five things to be able to create something really good without specific training:
If you want to support for foreign languages/loanwords or add in symbols to be combined with text (very useful for visual novels, websites, etc.) then the Unicode Code Charts are basically a recipe book for what you can include, what it roughly looks like and where it goes to work in a font.
The Unicode Proposal Documents include great info on historical punctuation and letters if historical styles are of interest.
So is MUFI (the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative).
There are different ways to go about drawing the characters. Some create them in real life and scan them. Others create in font editors or other preferred software.
The choice of font editor partly depends on how polished you want the results to be. Bad vs good spacing between characters (kerning) can make such a big difference to whether a font looks 'right' or 'broken'.
Font editors that do a lot of the kerning work for you can be a life-saver.
@HexanyIves
Don't fuss too much about getting the spacing perfect, though. It is very common during typesetting for writers/publishers and so forth to manually adjust spacing of a typeface by doing stuff like adding in extra very small spaces between letters.
Still, the better the spacing is to begin with (even for a personal typeface) the easier and more fun it will be to use.
...but you don't need to do the kerning all at once. You can start using a font and adjust later as needed.
@HexanyIves
Personally, I've found it super simple to create using the affordable Affinity software, using lines to make sure things line up and then importing into a font editor that does a lot of the kerning.
This way I can also create right next to references.
Most letters/numbers make use of one or more of the same basic strokes: the straight line, the curved line and the circle.
A method of getting a font with a consistent look is to reuse these strokes and modify as needed.
@Trajecient Hoooly! Huge thanks for the detailed response!
Affinity Publishing looks quite interesting, but I usually prefer open source software. Is there any good FOSS publishing software that can work on both windows and linux?
Also what do you think about FontForge? I think I'm going to draw the pixel art fonts in Aseprite, but for non-pixel ones, I would probably like to do draw them within a font editor.
I don't have personal experience with it but the only FOSS desktop publisher I am aware of (as opposed to illustration or word processor programs) is Scribus.
It is comparatively lacking in features and less user-friendly but could still meet your needs. It definitely works on Linux, whereas the Affinity Suite is not officially on Linux and it can be hard to get it working there.
I have used FontForge in the past, but never to create a font...
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