Type Tools by Mark Frömberg

How to be a productive type designer 🧩 Too easy with this new Plugin for @glyphsapp : ‘Script Deck’ A virtual pad controller for all your favorite scripts. No more menu digging, no more shortcut memorizing. Now live in the Plugin Manager. And check out the PDF manual 🤓 #productivity #hacks #typedesign #tools #glyphsapp #scriptdeck

Type design can be a serious and tedious business, but not anymore with this innovative approach. 🎛️🔠 I’ll show you how to make it more interactive and fun by using a MIDI controller with knobs, bringing back the tactile experience to the digital world. Turning knobs feels natural and intuitive, making it a whole lot easier and more enjoyable than using a mouse or trackpad to adjust sliders. 🖱️🔄 Why would you? When working on fonts with many axes, it’s crucial to constantly monitor the intermediate design space locations. Moving around in the design space needs some sort of control, so why not use a MIDI controller for that? It suddenly becomes an engaging and exciting process.🎚️🎉 The best part? The next update of ❝Variable Font Preview❞ will support MIDI right out of the box. Just plug in any MIDI controller with rotary encoders (that’s what the knobs are called), and you’re good to go. 🎹🔌 Here, I’ve limited my controller to 5 knobs. Managing a font with 5 variation axes is already a hefty task (this example font has 16 masters 🤯). But there are no limits to the number of knobs you can use. You don’t even need to build your own controller. 🛠️🚀 Don’t miss out on the next update of ❝Variable Font Preview❞ for @glyphsapp now and try it out as soon as the update is live. I would also love your feedback and answer questions. Discuss! 💬👇

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#GlyphsApp #graphicdesignerlife #graphicdesign #typedesign #itsnicethat #typography #contemporarytype #font #variablefonts #typetopia #designhacks #lettering #variablefontpreview

🧡 This Saturday in Berlin! 🧡 I’m joining the Gaechinesche Flea Market & Umami Dreams Film Club🫧 hosted by @heissemaroni__ Heisse Maroni — and bringing our fonts to life in fun, tangible ways! ❤️Come check out: ✦ Gonggi sets ✦ Postcards ✦ Magnets — all designed using my own typefaces 🎨 Special thanks to @mark2mark_tools Mark Frömberg for helping 3D design & print some of the pieces! 📍 Torstraße 39, 10119 Berlin (Garden / Hinterhaus, left side, ground floor) 📅 Saturday, 31 May 2025 Swing by, say hi, and take home a piece of our type charms 🌀 #FleaMarketBerlin #hypertype #HeisseMaroni #TypographyDesign #typeproduct #Magnets #Gonggi #3DPrint #MarkFrömberg #BerlinEvents #베를린 #베를린여행 #디자인마켓 #플리마켓

Have you tried the animation feature in Variable Font Preview? If NO: why not? If YES: how does it go? Feel free to post a video with it in use and tag me for reposting. #variablefontpreview is a #typedesign plugin for @glyphsapp

An often requested feature for “Variable Font Preview” was to animate the axes. 😵 Did I write “WAS”? Yes indeed. Because this incredible new feature is now live. Try it out right now. Get #variablefontpreview from the @glyphsapp plugin manager Make cool videos, post them and tag me. Let me know if this helps your design process or if it adds at least a little pinch of fun to your work. What do you think? 🤗 Follow @mark2mark_tools and @mark2mark_one for more #typedesign #typetools #designhacks

This feature request by @slobzheninov did not let go off me. I had to jump to the keyboard right away and implement a prototype to see how it could work. The idea was to link glyphs to a zone with the ”Mark Zones“ plugin. Now evertime you change that zone, all the linked glyphs will change with it. This unlocks incredible speed for your adjustments of accents, for example to quickly generate the uppercase diacritics. Last thing to do before shipping this marvelous new feature: creating the UI to add the glyphs. And fixing some math, as like always: what looks so simple once it works is usually very complex behind the scenes. Get “Mark Zones” from the @glyphsapp plugin manager and try it out for free. Do you have feature requests for this or any other of my plugins? Always let me know 🤩 #markzones #designprocess #designerhacks #typedesign #designtools

Why is “Mark Zones” better than Guidelines? ⬇️ 🔹 Normal guidelines don’t provide overshoot, “Mark Zones” does. 🔹Guidelines require several adjustments to each individual line and clutter the Edit View. “Mark Zones” allow for a single adjustment, such as position, size or overshoot. That is way more efficient. 🔹Additionally, each zone can be assigned a unique color for clever organisation, also not possible with guidelines. 🔹The labels are displayed neatly for the entire zone, while guidelines have a label beside each line. - Lastly, you can easily show/hide groups of zones by checking or unchecking their respective Custom Parameter. Try out “Mark Zones”: install it from the @glyphsapp plugin manager and boost your type design quality to the next level. #markzones #plugin #productivityhacks #typedesign #designtools #designerhacks

💜 Virtual Masters 💜 are now supported again in “Variable Font Preview” The update to version 3.6 makes it possible to preview your virtual@masters again. Virtual masters are useful for example for variation axes that are not changing all of your glyphs, but only a few. For example a “descender” axis like here with #nunkifont. You don’t set up the masters for that axis in your @glyphsapp font info globally, but only in the effected glyphs. Another new feature with the latest version of Variable Font Preview is that it will now always load with the font’s default variation. So it will not start with all sliders at 0, and also does not start with some weird extrapolated previews. 🤗 Get it, if you don’t have it yet, from the Glyphs Plugin Manager. Thanks to @pia_schroeer for pointing me to the former issue as she attempted to make the Gendersternchen work in her upcoming project. #VariableFontPreview @glyphsapp #plugin #typedesign #typeface #design #tool #glyphsapp #letters #typefacedesign #type #typematters #workflow #improvement #speedup #font #variablefonts

Presenter Pro in use by @type.eeu You can see the new user interface here. I moved it from its formerly hidden spot in the context menu directly onto the screen for easy access. Now it takes no time at all anymore to tweak the presentation style to whatever you want. Give it a try if you haven’t yet. You’ll love it. Available in the Glyphs 3 Plugin Manager. #presenter #pro #typedesigner #typemasters #designhacks #typehacks #glyphs

No matter if you design Latin, Greek, Thai, Arabic, Hangul: you need this plugin in your toolbox. Why is that? ⤵️ 🧼 “Mark Zones” comes in really handy to align your diacritics (or other marks) vertically. Normal guidelines are too clunky and messy for that. 💎 “Mark Zones” will give you a better guide of the vertical zone your marks may live in. Including a custom overshoot for round or pointy shapes. 📏 Zones will automatically show their vertical center, so you can align smaller marks easily. 🌈 You can color and name each zone and add filters, so that they show only for their dedicated script. 🪄 It will also highlight the bezier nodes which are *exactly* on the boundaries of the zone aaaand highlight anchors that are *NOT* on an “Anchor” zone. 👉 There are so much more features to explore. Give it a try and install “Mark Zones” from the @glyphsapp Plugin Manager. #markzones #glyphs #plugin #typedesign #typedesigner #tools #designtools #designerhacks #typetopia #contemporarytype

I think this was the fastest feature request to shipping I made so far. Half an hour from the question to deploy 🤭⤵️ Thanks @rosalie.wagner for this great request: Now you can type out all the scripts with a plus (+) in between and the same zone will show up in all those scripts. In this example, I just type “Greek + Latin”, but you can put as may scripts as you want. What is your next feature request? Let me know in the comments. Try out the new and vastly improved “Mark Zones” plugin for @glyphsapp now. #markzones #plugin #glyphs #typedesign #typetopia #designhacks #fontmaking #typetools

⤵️ There is one crucial tool I would recommend to every type designer, whether they are new or experienced. This thing is not originally from the design world, but it can greatly improve your workflow and free your mind. And it is free. ✨I am talking about version control, specifically “git.” But don’t worry, you won’t have to open the Terminal or write any code. 🧚🏻‍♀️ And that’s the beauty of it. With the GitHub desktop app, you have a simple user interface to track all your changes. 💡Font sources, whether they are “.ufo” or “.glyphs” files, are just plain text files and perfect for git. Whenever you make a change to your file, you commit it with a message. This creates a log of your progress, and you can always go back to any point in time. No more files with dates or versions in their names. For every font project I have only one source file in my folder, nothing else. 🧩 So, if I could give one tip to any new type designer, it would be to spend a few hours learning git. You’ll be a much happier d#signer for the rest of your life. 🪄 Make sure to follow @mark2mark_tools for more tips Comment below: Do you have questions how to implement an easy fit workflow or how to stop creating tons of copies of your files forever? #designertips #howtodesign #designerhacks #typedesigner #typedesignclass #typedesigners #hacksforlife #typetopia #glyphsapp #robofont #fontlab keyboard: @dygmalab Raise