How To Use Font Glyphs On Android (& IPad too)


Quick Links:

  • Creative Fabrica Online Fontcloud (It's Free)
  • Free Watershed Font (what I used for this test)
  • How To Install Fonts On Android ( Varies by phone & It's a waste of time, don't bother.  But if you REALLY want to, try one of these apps - iFont, FontFix, HiFont, or Fontster.) Then Download a Unicode App to view the glyphs on fonts you have installed. (I'm still comparing apps to find the "best" unicode app)
  • How To Install Fonts On Ipad  - Download the Anyfont App for $1.99 (But you won't need to do that, if you use fontcloud) Then download the Unicode App, for fonts you install on your device.
How to add fonts to an android phone varies by phone, and even by model - and is really not a great idea anyway.  You don't want your android operating system to use those fonts - you just want to put them together to use in Design Space.


FontCloud by Creative Fabrica, while not perfect, is a pretty good quick work around - AND it allows you to use the font glyphs too! Instead of installing the fonts, you upload them to fontcloud, then screenshot your text, and clean it up in Design Space.  It's an extra step, as there is no way to just save it as an svg - but it does work!  And unlike Design Space, fontcloud reads font kerning, so your text will be spaced perfectly, just as if you had used fontlab pad.

As an added benefit,  this free service now has all of your favorite fonts backed up. So if you lose your device, or it crashes, you still have all of your fonts, from any device you login from!

Once uploaded, you can see your text in every font you have uploaded, choose the one you like, add any glyphs, then turn your screen sideways, enlarge so the text fills the screen, and screenshot it.   Upload the screenshot to design space, erased the white background, and voila! 

Step By Step:


Any font will work, but I wanted to start with one that was not from Creative Fabrica, so you can see that it works with any font.  And I wanted to use one with glyphs, so you can see that glyphs work with this.  And of course, I wanted it to be free.  :-)

When you download this in android, it will go to the downloads folder, in a zip file.
To locate it, find the "My Files" app on our phone.  (Use the search option at the top of your apps screen, if you need help finding it.)  

 

There are two photos above.  On the left, in the My Files App, choose Downloads.
Locate the zip file and tap on it.

It should open, and you will see a screen similar to the photo on the right.
You can uncheck the macosx file -  it serves no purpose, even if you are using an apple device.  Then at the bottom of the screen, tap extract.

Now go to fontcloud:
And all the way at the bottom, on the right, choose upload


This part will vary by phone, but on mine, it will take me to a screen with my "recent" items, and the font will not appear here.  Click on the 3 lines to the left of recent

A menu drops down, and I can choose "Downloads" from there.



There are three files here.  I want the one at the top - the folder
The two underneath are zip files - they can be deleted, since I have already unzipped those fonts.  In that folder you will see a few files - and in this view, you will not be able to tell which is the otf.  If you want to know for sure, you can go back to the My Files app, and search for "watershed".  There you can see the file size for the OTF file.  Go back to fontcloud, and upload the file that is the correct size. If I were doing a bunch of files at once, I would create a folder on my phone and move all of the otf files to that folder, then upload them all from there.

When you type sample text in fontcloud, you will see it in every font you have uploaded there.  Similar to using WordMarkIt for viewing your installed fonts on  a computer.

Click on  the font you want to use, which today, is watershed.  I changed my sample text to "glyphs"

Scroll down and choose your glyph, just tap on it to copy, then scroll back up and press to paste.  At the very top, see the boxes with the x?  That's where I pasted a glpyh.  Right under that is the preview, showing the tail glyphs.

Tip - if your glyph is not pasting, make sure you are pressing in the sample text box, not in the white preview box.

Turn your phone sideways, make the image as large as you can, then take a screenshot.

Crop the image

Then Upload it to Design Space.  When you upload, use the wand to erase all of the white background.  It uploaded as one image, so no need to weld.

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Need More Free Fonts?
Here's Where To Find LOADS Of Them!

https://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/2020/05/where-to-find-loads-of-free-fonts.html

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Facebook Page - For Tips, Tricks, & Free SVGS
 https://www.facebook.com/fieldsofheathercrafts/

Facebook Group- For Questions, Support, Sharing Projects, 
and LOADS More Free SVGS in themed posts with links in the comments
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1121399284857845
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