Pretty Pretty Characters

I used to think I wanted to be a graphic designer when I was in college and spent loads of time playing around with Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.  But after college, I stopped keeping up with all the new-fangled software and that's when Illustrator suddenly became the "it" tool.  I didn't really want to buy it since I knew I would only be using it for the wedding, so when my 30 day trial was over, I figured it was ok since I was having someone design my invitations for me.  However, I found a font, fell in love with the glyphs, but needed a way to access the glyphs without Illustrator.  I so loved the way my name looked with the glyphs, I had to do it myself to email to MaeMae Paperie since apparently I'm that anal particular to detail.  :)

So for people who are looking for a free program for vectors and illustrations - enter Inkscape.  Inkscape should really be used by the casual user as I find that it's interface is not as intuitive and smooth as illustrator.  With that said, it's a great alternative to paying for a program that someone would only use for a specific purpose (like a wedding!).

Glyphs are characters that are just a little different/fancier than the normal font set you would get if you used Word.  For example, below is an example of an address using the normal fonts and then using glyphs.  Big difference, right?!

Unfortunately, it's not the most intuitive thing to use glyphs in Inkscape but this is the approach I used.  I glyphed all the addresses for my guests and, while it was a very long and tedious process, it was cheaper than a calligrapher and it was definitely worth it for me.

Step 1: Select the text button

Step 2: Go to Edit --> Special Characters

Step 3: A new character box will then pop up.  Select the font you want and a complete character list will show up.   Click on the glyph character you want to use.  

Step 4: When you click on the character, you will see a new box that has the Unicode character.  You will need to use the 4 code character.  In this case, the unicode character for the glyphed "k" is e060.

Step 5: Press Control + u.  At the bottom toolbar, you will see the word "Unicode".

Step 6: Enter in the unicode from above (eo6o) and press enter.

Step 7: The new character will appear!

Tips: If there are certain characters you use a lot, you can add it to your favorites and then switch to your favorites screen so you don't have to scroll so much to search for the codes of characters you would use a lot.