A couple of months ago I wrote a popular tutorial on How to Glyph. There were questions. One of the main questions was how-to glyph in not-Photoshop. Obviously I’m not a whiz in all the programs, but there is a built-in Character Map with most (all?) OSs -operating systems.

I’m on Windows 10 & I’m using the new and vastly improved Character Map. You can get this in the Microsoft Store for free, if it’s not already on your system.

Another question that was asked is where to find all those fabulous glyphy fonts. It just so happens a new limited-time free glyph font came out today. I just downloaded & ooooh boy does it have glyphs! So. Many. Glyphs. You can find it on Design Cuts, free through April 14th at 9 am UTC. I’m talking about the new font duo Broted Young Plant by Designer Alit Designs.

Let me start by saying, there is absolutely zero chance I’m going to show you all the options possible with Broted Young Plant today. I think this is the most options I’ve ever encountered in one (free) font. Instead I’m going to show off the regular, sans serif, font and then switch over to the script version with an alternate or two. I’ll show you how to select those alternate glyphs via the character map, after that you’re on your own to explore this incredible font duo!

I mentioned this is a font duo. This means there is both a regular, as well as a script version of this font. At first glance, it looks like the regular version is where it’s at. There are 14 options of the regular font. This is already awesome. However, it’s the single script version that has all the magnificent glyphs hidden inside.

On it’s own, without any glyphs selected, Broted Young Plant is already adorable. I love “my” T like this. But. Then I went to the glyph panel & came up with this. LOVE!

So I answered the second question first, where to find an awesome glyphy font. Now on to the first, more complicated question. How-to glyph in not-Photoshop? I’m using the newest version of the Windows-based Character Map. You can access this when installed (if not installed, please go to Microsoft to get this version).

  • Type Character Map
    • find this at the bottom of your desktop screen
    • in the search box
  • Choose the new Character Map UWP with the blue icon
    • do not click Open on the old Character Map

As soon as you click on the blue-iconed Character Map, the new & improved Character Map will pop up. You can now easily find the Broted Young Plant font one of two ways.

  1. Use the teeny, tiny (circled) scroller; or
  2. Simply type in “Broted” at the top left in the search box

Here you can see what happens once I typed in Broted.

  • Click on Broted Young plant script
  • This will give you access to the glyphs

In my example, I’m searching for “my” T. However, you can search for any letter you’d like. I’m going to search for the capital T only, but you can see the option is there to search for the small letter T, or lower case T, as well. Broted Young Plant script has multiple lower case glyph options as well. You can try these out on your own.

  • Click in the top right search box “search character or unicode hex“
  • Type in T
  • Dropdown appears automatically
  • Click on Latin Capital Letter T
    (or any letter of your choice)

The next screen has a lot of options, bear with me. I have my pop-up box sized optimally for screen shots, however, you can make it full screen by clicking on the maximize square in the top right corner, or simply dragging a corner. You can also resize just the letter view screen by either:

  • Clicking on Fit, on the bottom right; or
  • Dragging the barely visible divider between the character view & letter view

Finally, you can take a closer look at all the alternate glyphs for your Capital Letter T by clicking the teeny, tiny dropdown arrow on the bottom right under 4 typography variations. You can see that Default is automatically selected.

I’m only going to show one alternate glyph, or Stylistic Alternate, here. You can experiment with all the glyphs on your own.

  • Click on the 2nd Stylistic Alternate; or
  • Any alternate

Now that your favorite, or in this case my favorite, glyph is selected. All you need to do is copy.

  • Click on Copy on the bottom underneath your T

Unless you aren’t following along exactly, and chose the Default, you will have a warning pop-up that:

Copied
Glyph variations cannot be copied.
Default variant copied.

This is a problem. A problem with a solution. Albeit a little longer solution than a simple Copy + Paste would’ve been.

Instead of copying our glyph, we are going to use the Save As function. This will give you a PNG version of your glyph, with a transparent background. It’s not as simple a solution primarily because your PNG is one, big, size.

Copy & Paste would give you the ability to resize in your font manager to the same size as all the letters in your word (ie, all my “Toiny” letters could be 72 pt or 48 pt, etc).

  • Click on Save As, bottom of your character view
  • Pop-up is immediate
  • Click on Black Fill
    • under Save as PNG image

Make sure you save it somewhere you remember. You can change the name if you want (ie, just a T).

  • Click Save

You can now insert your glyph as an image into your program. You can do this in any program that allows images, including word processing, graphics software or even PDFs.

I’m inserting my glyph into Microsoft Word so you can see how versatile this method is. Your software may have a different technique for inserting a PNG image.

  • Click on Insert
  • Click on Pictures
  • Click on (Insert Picture From) This Device

This gives you a pop-up box. Navigate to where you saved your glyph.

  • Click on the glyph
  • Click on insert

This inserts your glyph image full-size. There are many ways to resize the image.

  • I dragged the corners to shrink my image size

 

TaDA! I have my alternate glyph, in my Word document. This technique should work with any program that supports PNG files.

I’m going to continue playing with my new (free) font: Broted Young Plant. I’ve barely scratched the surface of it’s swooshes, swashes & glyphs!