Making A Pictogram Font

Carl Shank • June 8, 2024

Making A Pictogram Font

In a recent publication by CARE Typography (CARE Fonts: Selected Pictogram Fonts and Their History, 2024, Lulu Press), I introduced several "dingbat" fonts that we were able to craft, especially for church or non-profit use. They included the Ministry Pics font, the Fanciful Alphabets font, The StoryBook font, the Fairy Tale font, the Hand Tools font and fonts derived from ancient alphabets. We also introduced the Christograph font.


SUBJECT TO SCORN, says the famous typographer, Robert Bringhurst in his description of what are called dingbats. Dingbats are real characters, actually pictograms, like telephones, mail envelopes, crosses, cartographic symbols and so forth. It might seem that dingbats serve little useful purpose. However, in 1994, David Carson of Ray Gun magazine set an interview in Zaph Dingbats, unreadable, but “ironic perhaps that we’re still bringing it up, more than two decades later.” (Nigel French & Hugh D’Andrade, The Type Project Book: Typographic Projects to Sharpen Your Creative Skills & Diversify Your Portfolio (Pearson Education, Inc., 2021), callout on “Icons” on 228)


I happen to like dingbats. They spur my imagination and help me say things or describe things that can’t be fully said in words alone. In his now out of print, Before & After Magazine, editor and creator John McWade talks about the “hidden art in dingbat fonts” — “Dingbats are real pictures and often excellent, but so small they’re commonly overlooked (except by kids, who are expert at spotting small treasures).” (John McWade, “The Hidden Art in Dingbat Fonts,” Before & After Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 5, 1993) He notes that dingbats can be made super size to catch the eye, or made tiny to delight the eye. 


Actually creating a font is time consuming and hard work. Things like "The Bump Rule," where drawing points are placed at inflection points, "The Rule of One-Third," which says the distance between a drawing point and its associated Bévier Control Points (BCPs) should be one-third of the length of the curve being drawn, "The Conciseness Rule," where the smallest number of drawing points should be used to create a shape, and "The Orthogonality Rule," where the handles should be perpendicular or at right angles, are highly recommended by Stephen Moye in Fontographer: Type By Design (MIS Press, 1995, 13). Then we must think about removing overlapping points, accurately drawing Bézier curves, eliminating orphan points, hinting, kerning and so forth. All of this goes into creating a font that is clean, well-constructed, easy to the eye and can pass typographical standards. Months of work went into my Greek font I made some time ago for the Christian-based Word Publications. But this blog is not about such complexity.


How do you make a dingbat or pictogram font? Having made several now, using FontLab's Fontographer (I use version 5.2.4 on a Mac mini 2012 running Mac OS 10.14 Mojave. Newer Mac systems must use FontLab 7 or the newer 8) (See Below). There are several important steps. But first, we need to make some definitions and acquaint you with some of the language used in the Fontographer program.




Using Adobe's Garamond Pro font as an. example, the above word "Ship" helps us understand some font or typeface terminology. The letters, or in our case, the pictograms or images, sit on what is called a BASELINE, with the ORIGIN point at the x, y coordinates of (0, 0). The top of the letter or image is called the CAP HEIGHT. If it is a regular font, we would also include the height of the small letters, or the X-HEIGHT, and any ASCENDERS, like the "h" above that protrude above the CAP HEIGHT a bit. We need not worry about these latter definitions with most dingbat fonts.


We do need, however, to acquaint ourselves with Fontographer's guides that are used to place the images or pictograms inside to make the font. This can be seen below.

Each letter, or image in our case, rests inside what is called an EM-SQUARE, which is a rectangular field the size of a capital "M" covering the DESCENDER (below the Baseline) all the way above the CAP HEIGHT to the top of the em-square. Notice in the letter "Q" above, the tail of the "Q" rests beneath the Baseline in the Descender area. To the sides of the letter or image will be the left and right SIDEBEARING, spaced usually evenly from the left and right edges of the letter or image used. Such distances are usually 30-40 units in the Fontographer program, but better seen in eyeballing the left and right sidebearings.


Making the Pictogram Font

STEP ONE — Find suitable, well drawn images, to scan at about 300 dpi (dots per inch). Make the scans ALL THE SAME height, usually about an inch or so in height.


STEP TWO —  Scan the original images, making sure the scan is straight.


STEP THREE — Save the scanned images, one at a time, as JPG images.


STEP FOUR — Open the Fontographer program (I use Fontographer 5.2.4). Using the included "Preview" program on all Macintoshes, open the images one at a time and paste them into Fontographer. Assign each scan to whatever glyph you want. Thus, for the "Q" letter, I assigned the scanned image for the "Ash Wednesday" graphic in the Christograph Font.


STEP FIVE — Trace the image. This can be a manual or automatic trace. If the images are clear and clean and scanned well, I use Fontographer's "Auto Trace" tool to trace the scanned images. make sure the principle handles are orthogonal. Use Guides for height so that the images rest on the baseline and are at the same height in the Fontographer em-square. Clean up the traced images using Fontographer's tools for "Clean Up Paths," "Remove Overlap," and "Correct Path Direction" if needed.


STEP SIX — Generate the Pictogram font, using OTF for both Macs and PCs. Print an extensive sample and make corrections, if needed.

Successful Layout & Design

English Penman Calligraphic Fonts

By Carl Shank • July 13, 2026
George Bickham the Elder (b. 1684) was one of the most influential English engravers, calligraphers, and writing masters of the eighteenth century. Although he was a capable print engraver, his lasting significance lies in his role in preserving and popularizing English Round Hand (later known as Copperplate script) through beautifully engraved writing manuals. His work shaped business handwriting, penmanship education, typography, and ornamental lettering for generations. He trained as both a writing master and an engraver, two professions that were closely linked before the advent of modern printing. Rather than merely copying handwriting, he engraved elaborate penmanship examples onto copper plates, allowing thousands of identical, highly detailed specimens to be printed. He became renowned for his extraordinary ability to translate handwritten originals directly onto copper plates with exceptional fidelity, a skill admired by his contemporaries.

Compositors & Type: Origin and Use of “Uppercase” and “Lowercase”

By Carl Shank • June 13, 2026
Compositors & Type: Origin and Use of “Uppercase” and “Lowercase” Carl Shank, CARE Typography Most everyone knows what “uppercase” and “lowercase” letters are. They refer, of course, to our “capital” letters and our “regular” small print. But not many know why or how they came to be known by such terminology. The answer is found in the history and development of typography and printing. “Case” here doesn’t refer to “circumstance” or “condition.” It refers to the wooden trays used to store metal letters, the top case for capital letters (“uppercase”) and the lower case for small letters. Each tray was divided into compartments to hold the type. The lower case also held the punctuation marks and other pieces of type, like “spacers.” The type case was a shallow wooden tray divided into compartments of various sizes. There were about thirty styles of type cases, and some of these were made in different sizes.[1] The most common, or standard, size was 32¼ by 16 inches, outside dimensions, and ⅛ inches deep, inside. One of three traditional plans or schemes for such type cases involved (1) all characters in one case; (2) capitals, small capitals and a few other characters in one case; or (3) the small letters, figures, points, spaces and quads in another case. The two latter cases formed a pair and would nearly always be used together.(See Images) Hand compositors (or “swifts”) would take individual letters, spaces and punctuation marks or other characters from the type case and place them in what was called a composing “stick” in such a manner that when the type characters are properly assembled, they form words, sentences and paragraphs. The work of the press room compositor was divided into two fundamental operations — the “setting” of type and the “unsetting” of type. The former was called composition and the latter, distribution. A visual example of such typesetting can be seen in some of the episodes of The Waltons, an American historical dramatelevision series about a family in rural western Virginia in the Appalachian/Blue Ridge mountains chain, during the economic hardships and mass unemployment of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the subsequent United State home front during World War II in the 1940s. The series aired from 1972 to 1981. John-Boy, a leading character of the series, opened a print shop in a shed by the family home with an old-fashioned mechanical printer that required setting cold metal type from a type case. His brother was the compositor while John-Boy ran the printing machine.
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