Draw Your Own Font
Draw the letters, download a real font file, and type in your own handwriting.
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About the Draw Your Own Font converter
Draw the alphabet, one letter at a time, and the page assembles a genuine TrueType font file. Install it and every application on your machine can set text in your own hand.
It is the simplest way to make your own font: no template to print, no scan to upload, and no subscription — just draw a letter and watch your typeface start to exist.
The sample line updates as you draw, so you can see your handwriting come back as type long before you finish. That moment is the reason to build the rest.
Draw it here, do not photograph it
The usual way to do this is to print a template, fill it in with a pen, photograph it and upload the picture to somebody's server. That costs money, loses fidelity at every step, and means handing over a sample of your handwriting.
Here you draw straight onto the page with a mouse, a trackpad or a finger. A phone or tablet suits it best — handwriting is a thing hands do, and a touchscreen is far closer to a pen than a mouse will ever be.
Guides mark the baseline, x-height, cap height and the ascender and descender lines, so letters line up with each other instead of drifting. The dashed line to the right shows where the next letter will start.
A stroke is not a line
A font has no concept of a line with a thickness. Every glyph is a set of closed outlines that get filled in, so each stroke you draw has to be turned into the shape that surrounds it — up one side, around the rounded end, and back down the other.
Where those outlines sit inside one another, direction decides everything. Fonts fill by the non-zero winding rule, which means the inside of an O only becomes a hole if it runs the opposite way round to the outside. Get that backwards and the letter fills in solid. Nesting is worked out automatically, so a letter with a counter comes out as a letter rather than a blob.
A real font file, assembled byte by byte
The download is an actual TrueType font: ten interlocking tables covering outlines, character mapping, horizontal metrics and headers, with a checksum over each table and another over the whole file. Get any one of them subtly wrong and the font installs happily and then renders every letter as an empty box.
It is built here in your browser rather than fetched from anywhere, and it carries no watermark, no restriction and no expiry. Only the letters you have drawn appear in it; anything you skip simply falls back to another font, so a partial alphabet is still perfectly usable.
It takes more than one sitting
Twenty-six capitals, twenty-six lower case, ten numbers and some punctuation is a real piece of work, and the grid at the top shows exactly how far along you are.
Your letters are saved in this browser as you draw, so closing the tab does not lose them. Because that storage lives on this device, clearing your browsing data would take it — so there is an export that writes a project file you keep, and an import to bring it back or move it to another machine.
Frequently asked questions
Is this really a usable font file?
Yes. It is a standard TrueType file that installs like any other font and works in every application on your system — a word processor, a design tool, a browser. There is no watermark and no limit.
Do I have to draw every letter?
No. The font contains only the letters you have drawn, and anything missing falls back to another font. Plenty of people draw the capitals and stop, and that works perfectly well for headings.
Is my handwriting uploaded?
No. Everything happens in your browser — the drawing, the outline building and the font file itself. Nothing is sent anywhere at any point.
Can I use a phone or tablet?
Yes, and it is the better way to do it. Drawing letters with a finger or a stylus is far closer to handwriting than drawing them with a mouse.
Why did my O come out solid?
That is the classic hand-built font mistake, and the page handles it for you: an inner outline has to run the opposite way to the outer one for the counter to be a hole. Nesting is detected automatically, so draw the outside and the inside as separate strokes and it will work.
Will I lose my work?
It is saved in this browser as you draw, so closing the tab is safe. Clearing your browsing data would remove it, so export a project file if the font matters to you — it can be imported again later or on another machine.
Can I sell things made with my font?
It is yours. You drew it, it is generated on your own machine, and nothing here claims any rights over it.