Discussion
Font editors as we knew them feel increasingly obsolete to me. I do most of my work with pen and paper, Claude Code, CodexGUI, Hermes, and OMP.
I still use Runebender for some drawing, but I doubt the standard desktop font editor survives in its current form.
Designers can already vibecode their own custom tools, like calligraphers of the Arabic script carve their own qalams.
@elih You are very quick to extrapolate from your own preferences and processes to thinking that the ways other people like to work are becoming obsolete and the tools they use are not going to survive. I like that you are finding new ways to work, and maybe those ways will appeal to some other people, but that doesn’t imply anything general about processes and tools.
Tool choice seems to me quite personal. I know many people who love Glyphs, while it would be hard to overstate just how much I don’t. Luc de Groot still uses FontLab Studio 5. I still do my OTL production in a tool written thirty years ago in Visual Basic that requires me to maintain a Windows machine.🤷
@TiroTypeworks yes, thats is what I was trying to say, maybe not tactfully enough.
I think we are going to see more people using very custom tools that fit their own drawing styles and ways of working.
@TiroTypeworks That is basically what calligraphy of the Arabic script is.
The tool making is unique to the calligrapher and part of the aesthetic practice.
@elih Thanks for that link. Zak is great.
His 1979 book is the most frequently consulted text on my Arabic shelves: it is slimmer than most, but none of the others do such a good and systematic job of identifying the different styles, even the obscure ones.
@elih @TiroTypeworks
I guess most existing tools will incorporate AI features in one way or another, and perhaps new tools will emerge too. Not everyone wants to carve their own qalam, some are perfectly fine with a 10-pack from AliExpress.
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
