Features

A freeform canvas for sketching letters exactly as you would on paper, with real pressure-sensitive stroke width from Apple Pencil, Wacom, or a mouse.

One cell per character, with ascenderThe parts of a lowercase letter that reach above the x-height (the stem of a 'b', 'd', 'h', 'k', 'l') or below the baseline (the tail of a 'g', 'j', 'p', 'q', 'y')., x-heightHow tall lowercase letters are, measured from the baseline to the top of an 'x' — the single biggest factor in how big or small a typeface reads at the same point size., baselineThe invisible line every letter sits on — the flat bottom of an 'a', 'e', or 'x'. Descenders (the tail of a 'g' or 'y') hang below it., and descender guides plus draggable side bearingsThe empty space to the left and right of a glyph's ink, inside its own advance width — what actually keeps neighboring letters from touching. Fontane's Grid View lets you drag these directly as guide lines. — the systematic way to draw a full alphabet. A Lock Bearings toggle freezes the bearings so drawing over one draws instead of dragging it. A Reference Letterform toggle shows a faint Comic Sans backdrop as an orientation guide, sized to that cell's own guides — it disappears the instant you start drawing your own design in that cell.

Switch between constant-width ink and pressure-responsive thickness, with live size/thinning/smoothing/streamline controls and a live stroke preview showing exactly what the current brush and settings produce.

One skeletonThe raw pen path you actually draw — before any brush, nib, or pressure envelope turns it into a filled letterform. Fontane keeps the skeleton and the applied style as two separate layers, which is what makes swapping brushes on an already-drawn alphabet possible., many typefaces: the drawn path stays the source, and the brush applied to it — pressure envelope, swept calligraphy nib, or stipple stamps at your own spacing, rotation and jitter — is swapped at any time and restyles every letter at once.

A dedicated broad-nib pen: an oval held at a fixed size, roundness, and angle, dragged along your stroke — width comes from the direction you move, not how hard you press, the classic broad-pen hand (Italic, Gothic) rather than pressure-based contrast.

Copy a printed reference line with the stylus instead of drawing letter by letter — because the text is already known, Fontane only has to work out where one letter ends and the next begins (the biggest gaps between strokes), not what each one is. No OCR, no handwriting recognition, no server round-trip. Queue up whole character sets (Latin Basic, Cyrillic, punctuation, and more) and track coverage as you go, or type your own reference text for a script or language outside the built-in sets. Undo (Cmd/Ctrl+Z, or the on-screen button on touch/tablet) removes the last stroke.

A true Bezier pen with the full Illustrator toolset — Pen (P), Add Anchor (+, inserts without changing the curve), Delete Anchor (-), and Convert Anchor (C) — working in Sketcher and directly inside Grid cells, where shapes auto-tag to the cell's character.

Every vector path can render as a solid fill (the default) or as a constant-width stroke instead — pick which from the Path panel before you draw, with a width slider once Stroke is on. Stroke works on open paths too, so a line that never closes still exports as real ink instead of being dropped from the font.

Smooth points keep their handles in tangent continuity; Alt breaks the pair, double-click toggles smooth/corner. Hold Cmd for momentary direct selection, Shift for 45° constraints, Space to pan, Esc to end a path — and the pen cursor tells you what a click will do before you do it.

Draw a shape inside another and it becomes the counterThe enclosed or partially enclosed space inside a letter — the hole in an 'o', the two spaces in a 'B'. Draw it too small and the letter clogs up at small sizes. — a 'B' or 'O' works in pure vector. Where strokes are involved, closed shapes punch holes through them instead, the classic way to cut an 'o' or 'e'.

Reshape an already-drawn freehand stroke by dragging, inserting, or deleting its own anchor points, without redrawing it.

New fonts start focused on Latin Basic (a–z, A–Z); toggle Central European accents, Western European, Cyrillic, Greek, numbers, punctuation, and symbols on whenever you're ready — glyphsOne drawn shape in a font — not quite the same as a 'character'. The character 'a' might have several glyphs behind it: a base form, a bold alternate, a swash variant, each its own outline. you've already drawn always keep their cell.

Tag a drawn shape as a ligatureTwo or more letters redrawn as a single joined glyph — classically 'fi' or 'fl', where the dot of the 'i' would otherwise collide with the hook of the 'f'. (e.g. 'fi') and it exports with a real, automatic OpenType ligaA named, switchable behavior built into a font file — ligatures, stylistic alternates, and contextual alternates are each their own feature, off by default in most apps unless the user (or the app) turns them on. rule — the ligature triggers on its own in apps that respect the feature. Stylistic alternatesA second (or third) drawn version of a letter, available as a substitute for the default — a different lowercase 'a', a swashy capital, a single-story 'g'. The letter still means the same thing; it just looks different when chosen. export as their own named glyphsOne drawn shape in a font — not quite the same as a 'character'. The character 'a' might have several glyphs behind it: a base form, a bold alternate, a swash variant, each its own outline. for manual selection, and double as automatic variety: draw one alternate for a letter and a real caltAn automatic rule baked into a font that swaps in a different glyph depending on what's next to it — so the same letter doesn't look identically stamped every time it repeats. The mechanism itself lives in the font file, not in whatever app displays the text. rule swaps it in whenever that letter repeats back to back, so hand-drawn text doesn't read as a stamped-out font.

Add any one-off base character, ligatureTwo or more letters redrawn as a single joined glyph — classically 'fi' or 'fl', where the dot of the 'i' would otherwise collide with the hook of the 'f'., or alternateA second (or third) drawn version of a letter, available as a substitute for the default — a different lowercase 'a', a swashy capital, a single-story 'g'. The letter still means the same thing; it just looks different when chosen. outside the built-in sets by name.

Lasso-select any combination of strokes and vector shapes, then transform them as a group. Hold Cmd/Ctrl while Draw, Brush, Calligraphy, or Eraser is active for a momentary Select, Illustrator-style — release and you're back to drawing.

Duplicate strokes and shapes within Sketcher, within Grid, or across the two — paste into a different Grid cell and it's automatically fitted to size.

A full history stack covering drawing, tagging, and transform actions.

Related tools stack into Illustrator-style flyout slots (long-press to expand), and the settings palette shows only what the active tool actually uses — GlyphsOne drawn shape in a font — not quite the same as a 'character'. The character 'a' might have several glyphs behind it: a base form, a bold alternate, a swash variant, each its own outline.-style collapsible sections, with a live Path info box while you're on the pen.

Type freely using your own already-tagged glyphsOne drawn shape in a font — not quite the same as a 'character'. The character 'a' might have several glyphs behind it: a base form, a bold alternate, a swash variant, each its own outline. to see how your in-progress font reads as real text.

Apply CSS-driven animations (pulse, tilt, glitch, and more) to your lettering and export it as a self-contained HTML embed.

A complete OpenType font file, compiled entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded, nothing to install.

Export Light, Regular, and Bold as three independent OTF files sharing one family name — generated client-side from the same drawn strokes, no server round-trip.

The font as a UFO source package, the interchange format RoboFont, FontForge, GlyphsOne drawn shape in a font — not quite the same as a 'character'. The character 'a' might have several glyphs behind it: a base form, a bold alternate, a swash variant, each its own outline. and the fontTools toolchain all read — so a drawing can be spaced, kernedA manual spacing adjustment for one specific pair of letters — classically 'AV' or 'To', where the default spacing looks too loose because the letter shapes interlock. Applied pair by pair, not to the whole font. and finished in a professional type editor. Fontane's quadratic contours map onto UFO's own quadratic point type exactly, with no curve conversion.

Family name, style, designer, homepage, licence and copyright are written into the font's name table, so an exported font says who made it instead of installing anonymously.

The raw stroke centerlinesThe raw pen path you actually draw — before any brush, nib, or pressure envelope turns it into a filled letterform. Fontane keeps the skeleton and the applied style as two separate layers, which is what makes swapping brushes on an already-drawn alphabet possible. as an open SVG path, ready to bring into GlyphsOne drawn shape in a font — not quite the same as a 'character'. The character 'a' might have several glyphs behind it: a base form, a bold alternate, a swash variant, each its own outline..app or another vector tool for manual refinement.

Fontane's own save format — every stroke, glyphOne drawn shape in a font — not quite the same as a 'character'. The character 'a' might have several glyphs behind it: a base form, a bold alternate, a swash variant, each its own outline., and setting, so you can pause and resume a font later or move between devices.

A Python script for GlyphsOne drawn shape in a font — not quite the same as a 'character'. The character 'a' might have several glyphs behind it: a base form, a bold alternate, a swash variant, each its own outline..app that reads an FFF file directly and builds real glyphs with correct components and Bezier nodes.

Publish a finished font for anyone to browse and download, or share a direct link to it.

Before a font can be published, Fontane checks for a plausible history of real drawing activity — a lightweight guard against converted or stolen fonts.

No cookies, no third-party analytics or ad scripts, no persistent identifier written to your device.

Your drawings live in your browser's own storage — nothing reaches our servers unless you explicitly export or publish.