How do you build a typographical font?

Answer 1

It's done in a font editor. There are free ones, and others that cost a thousand dollars. Let me describe the gravity of your task: Your standard font contains over 200 printable characters. You have to make a character for each of them, and they all have to work together as a coherent mass. And with that...if you set periodicals a font editor is a very handy thing to have. I used to design a quarterly magazine for a Special Forces veterans' group. I used my font editor to make the Special Forces Dingbats font. It contains crossed arrows, jump wings and all sorts of other small graphics that are meaningful to them. I put the crossed arrows on the A key, jump wings on the P key (P is for Parachutist), and so on. Now, if I want to separate two paragraphs with a row of jump wings, I type P a few times, change the line to Special Forces Dingbats and open up the tracking a lot. They were so happy...