Font Selection

Process

For the purpose of these templates I have chosen to keep things simple and compatible with any system. Therefore I have chosen a standard font. However, it is useful to keep ready at hand the process of developing a more custom font with the intricacies of one's choice. The basic process to be followed in that case would be:

1. Identify a base font or characteristics of multiple fonts

A good starting step is to understand why fonts like Garamond, Segoe, Times New Roman, Arial etc are popular. Once one has understood the commonly discussed parameters and variations between different fonts, one is in a better position to pick a font which suits their template. I have chosen Garamond as the base font to build upon. The reason for choosing Garamond, and selling points for other great fonts are well summed up in the article below:

10 best presentation fonts

2. Pick up a few calligraphy ideas

For the most part, fancy ideas don't need to go into developing (or reusing) a good, clean font. But it can be fun to bring in interesting and different calligraphy ideas into font development. Even the very basics can help bring in one small element as an easter egg in your personalised font. A little googling and a few youtube videos should do the trick. I personally like the below link as a starting point:

calligraphy

3. Identify a few niceties to add, over and above the font

Equipped with your learnings from caligraphy, you can pick out the elements and ideas that you want to add on to your base font. Develop an idea of which characters you want to edit, and what specific changes from the base font you want to make to them. While selecting characters to change, you may want to keep in mind the frequency of occurrence of each character in natural text, and therefore the impact this change might have on ease of reading etc.

letter frequencies

4. Write out and scan font

Depending on the software that you choose to create the final font, you may not need to actually write the characters out on pen and paper. My personal preference is software which allow you to create the entire font digitally, without scanning. Most of them allow you to do this. However, it is usually a useful exercise to try writing out each of the characters of your font once. This helps you develop an appreciation for your font, especially the caligraphic niceties added on. And perhaps you'll find a few problem areas that you want to resolve before creating your font digitally.

5. Create a font digitally

There are many software (many free) which allow you to create a font by adjusting parameters of existing fonts, or drawing over them. The following article outlines some of the best tools for doing the same:

create your own font

6. Download and insert font

Once you have created your own font, the final step is adding it to MS Office, in order to use it in all of the templates. The following link walks through all of the required steps:

adding fonts to MS office

For now, I have taken the easy way out and just used Garamond, which gives me about 90% of the result for 10% of the effort. However, the excessive effort, in order to make a template truly your own might be satisfying.