FontStruct Keyboard Controls — The Unauthorized FontStruction Guide

The Unauthorized
FontStruction Guide

Keyboard Controls — hover any key to see what it does. Toggle Expert Mode with Shift+X; features marked EXP need it.

Hold Shift — or click a Shift key on the board — to flip to the Shift layer. A ● dot marks keys that do something extra with Shift.

⚠ Drag-and-drop can replace bricks everywhere

You can drag bricks around in "My Bricks" to rearrange them — but if you drop one brick onto another, FontStruct replaces that brick with the one you dropped everywhere it's used in your FontStruction. There's no confirmation, and it's a nightmare to fix. Mind your aim when dragging, and save before rearranging your palette.

#1: SAVE OFTEN

Save often. Seriously.
Bricks appear in "My Bricks" in the order you first use them — use this to plan ahead. If you know you'll need a brick, place it temporarily in one of the last letters (like ~) so your palette stays in order, then delete it when you reach that letter.
Use and lock guides (Shift+J) to get consistent letter spacing.
Cut (X) is a fast way to delete things.
Simplify "My Bricks": keep one or two bricks and transform them (flip / rotate) as needed. Two bricks plus transforms replaces eight near-duplicates cluttering your palette.
Fonts are all about ratios — a good-looking font has consistent ratios. Extra guides (U) help you keep them.
Check the preview (Enter) after every letter. Test real sentences and letter combinations, and use the width adjuster (W) to tune spacing per letter.
Want a monospaced font? Open the Preview and use the spacing controls (A) to set it to monospaced — FontStruct spaces every letter for you. For pixel fonts, stick to whole numbers.
Making fonts is a skill — every font you make, you get better. Try rebuilding a basic font like Arial (sans serif) or Times New Roman (serif) as practice.
Budget real time: Basic Latin alone is about 100 glyphs, so expect a full font to take 10–20 hours — and that's just Basic Latin, before accents or extended character sets.
Be patient. A great font takes time.