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FontLab

FontLab is our flagship font editor for Mac and Windows that helps you create fonts from start to finish, from a simple design to a complex project, and brings a spark of magic into type design.

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FontLab

Introducing FontLab 9

FontLab 9 lettering

FontLab 9 for Mac and Windows is now available. Revolutionary stem editing. Ultrasmooth tangents. Curved interpolation. Bracket layers. Optical oblique. Neural spacing & kerning. Visual features. AI, MCP & UI in 19 languages. Buy lifetime: $499. Upgrade from FontLab: $149, $49 or free!

Ask Aidus, FontLab’s built-in assistant powered by a large language model of your choice, anything: ask it about the app, about the current font. Ask it to build Font window filters, to write simple Python scripts, to write proof texts. Create a new glyph with Aidus using context-aware image generation.

Adjust the weight, width and slope of stems across one or several glyphs with the new Stem tool: visually, by units or by percentage. View Thickness consistency along curved and diagonal stems with Quick measurement rainbow.

Draw more confidently with the improved Pen tool: preview the next segment, draw corners, curves and tangents, or refine existing handles. Draw live calligraphic strokes with new Power Brush: use the Thickness tool to change the brush thickness, angle and roundness for every node. Add variation-compatible ink traps.

Ensure perfect G2-smoothness with Genius Tangent nodes when a line segment transitions to curve, and on rounded Smart Corners. Simplify part of a contour with the new Trowel tool, or clear an area with the Cleaner tool. Turn bitmap images into contours more accurately with improved Autotrace.

Turn on Quick Preview on drag and focus on the shape whenenver you drag: all the distractions disappear. Turn all snapping on and off at once with Enable Snapping. Repeat the last command on a different glyph or layer with Repeat.

Interpolate along curves with the Sigma tool. Switch construction partway along the axis with bracket layers. Slant glyphs with Make oblique action that performs automatic optical adjustment.

Kern existing and planned pairs in the new Superkerning panel. Use one set of kerning classes in all masters. Auto Space and Auto Kern with new neural algorithms. Preview multiple font sizes, masters, instances in the new Notepad panel; build and edit specimens, and export then to PDF.

Selectively copy-paste contours, appearance, metrics, anchors, guides, hints or masks across masters with Paste Special. Reuse Skin elements. Reshape elements with the Mesh filter. See which glyphs have contours, components or advanced elements with Color-code element type.

Visually edit and test features for all writing systems in the Lookups editor, test with the step-by-step lookup debugger. Control ligature caret positioning with anchors. Export visual TrueType hints into static and variable fonts with the genuine VTT engine.

Open and export Glyphs 4 files. Import Open Font Format 2026 fonts with cubic TrueType outlines, variable components and avar version 2 mappings. Automate your work with improved Python scripting. Automate FontLab from external scripts and agents with the built-in MCP server.

Use the interface and built-in help in 19 languages: English, Deutsch, Français, Español, Polski, Čeština, हिन्दी, Bahasa Indonesia, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Português, Русский, ไทย, Türkçe, Українська, Tiếng Việt, 简体中文, 繁體中文. Learn FontLab 9 from the all-new user manual. Simplify the user interface with Focused Menu.

FontLab

The four-stack of screen rendering

Most type designers know their fonts will be rendered differently on macOS and Windows. Fewer know the names of the four pieces of plumbing responsible. The names are worth knowing, because the plumbing shapes everything.

FontLab

FontLab TV: glyph construction from scratch

The first letter is the hardest. The FontLab TV glyph construction episode is a calm, deliberate walkthrough of drawing one letter — n — from a blank glyph cell to a finished, point-clean contour you can build a font around.

FontLab

Calfonts: italics that aren’t just slanted romans

Italics are the part of a font family that most often gets shipped wrong — slanted romans, no cursive structure, lopsided ovals. The Calfonts italic tutorial walks through what it actually takes to draw an italic that earns its place next to the roman.

FontLab

The FontLab book in Korean

Most font editors grew up thinking about Latin. In April 2025, a Korean designer published the book that translates FontLab into Hangul terms.

FontLab

Making Hangul in FontLab: a book, a script, a quiet milestone

In April 2025, a Korean book appeared with a modest title and a very specific promise: 폰트랩 타입 디자인 — FontLab Type Design. Its subtitle is even better: “FontLab and Hangul 2780, an enjoyable story.” That is not just a manual. It is a map through one of the hardest jobs in type design.

FontLab

FontLab TV: OpenType features made simple

OpenType features are the part of font design where text becomes typography. The FontLab TV OpenType episode walks through the feature tags you will actually use, what they do at runtime, and how to write them without breaking anything else.

FontLab

The long, awkward adolescence of color fonts

Type spent five hundred years in black and white. Then mobile phones demanded emoji, and four large companies sat down separately and proposed four entirely incompatible ways to put color into a font. The decade since has been an awkward growing-up.

FontLab

Briem: how to draw a bold (without ruining the regular)

A bold weight is not a thicker version of the regular. It is a different design that has to share a family with the regular and pretend they were drawn together. Briem’s bold tutorial — adapted lightly here — is the cleanest argument for why the obvious approach doesn’t work.