Type Light

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on August 17, 2011

While most people are content to use the fonts that come with their operating system, graphic designers and other creative types often like to have a little more font-related freedom. Type Light is an easy-to-use program with which you can edit existing fonts and even create new ones from scratch. The program requires either knowledge about how to work with fonts or the patience to acquire it, but it has plenty of features for those who are willing to explore its capabilities.

In Type Light, you can start with existing fonts in the TTF or OTF format. An inset panel displays a list of each glyph contained within a particular font, and you can make manual changes to each glyph and then save your edits. You can also create fonts from scratch using a toolbar of curves, corners, lines, and shapes, and there's a drawing tool for creating glyphs freehand. It's fairly easy to get the basics of how Type Light works just by fooling around with it, but the program also comes with a 22-page PDF Help file that contains a step-by-step Getting Started guide. Although we are by no means expert at working with fonts, we found the program to be pretty straightforward to use. We did wish, though, that it were capable of undoing more than just the last action taken. Overall, we think Type Light is a great choice both for those new to the world of editing and creating fonts and for more experienced users.

Type Light installs and uninstalls without issues.