TNOF

On-device type foundry

Drop a sketch. Get a font.

Turn handwriting, lettering, images, or scanned alphabets into an installable OTF font—privately and directly on your device.

PNG, JPG or WebP

Drop anything here or

Sketches, icons, letters — drop, browse or paste

  1. 01

    Drop artwork

    Photo, scan or PNG of your letters

  2. 02

    Auto-vectorise

    Background removed, letters split

  3. 03

    Get a real font

    Installable OTF plus a full kit

How TNOF works

Conversion runs in four passes. Your picture is separated into ink and background, the ink is grouped into connected regions, those regions are grouped into characters and put in reading order, and each character is traced into vector outlines and written into an OpenType font.

All four run in your browser. If the segmentation is uncertain, the review step opens so you can confirm it, rather than the tool reporting a conversion it is not sure about.

Supported inputs

Drop, browse, paste or photograph a PNG, JPG or WebP. PNG gives the cleanest result because it is lossless, so the edges of your strokes stay where you drew them. JPEG compression puts a soft halo along every high-contrast edge, which is exactly where the ink threshold has to make its decision.

Sheets of letters, and single pieces of artwork

A picture holding several separated letterforms is read as a specimen sheet: the characters are split apart, ordered, and mapped to the code points you assign, so you can type with them.

A picture holding one piece of artwork is read as one icon glyph and mapped to U+E001 in the Unicode Private Use Area, which exists so private symbols never collide with real characters.

TNOF only produces glyphs for shapes that are in your image. It will not invent a character you did not draw.

What you download

An installable OTF, a full-colour SVG of the traced artwork, one SVG per glyph, a font.css with an @font-face rule, a mapping.json recording which shape went to which code point, a specimen.html, and a README with install instructions for macOS, Windows and Linux.

It runs on your device

Your image is traced and built into a font in the browser. It is never uploaded to a server, which is also why the converter keeps working with no connection once the page has loaded.

Preparing an image that converts well

Most conversion problems are decided before the file is ever opened.

  • Use flat, even light. Window light on an overcast day beats a desk lamp, which throws a bright patch on one side and a shadow on the other.
  • Shoot square to the page, or scan at 300 dpi in greyscale.
  • Leave clear space between characters — letters that touch are read as one shape.
  • Prefer solid dark ink on plain white paper, and avoid ruled or gridded sheets.
  • Fill the frame. Detail you did not capture cannot be traced back in.
The TNOF converter open on a phone: a heading reading “Drop a sketch. Get a font.”, a dashed drop area with Upload and Camera buttons, and three numbered steps — drop artwork, auto-vectorise, get a real font.
TNOF on a phone. Drop, browse, snap or paste — the trace and the font build both run on the device.

Questions

What image formats can I upload?
PNG, JPG and WebP. PNG gives the cleanest result because it is lossless, so stroke edges stay exactly where you drew them.
Does my image get uploaded to a server?
No. Tracing and font building run in your browser, and the source image is never transmitted. That is also why the converter keeps working with no connection once the page has loaded.
Can TNOF create letters that are not in my image?
No. It only produces glyphs for shapes it finds in the picture. If your sheet has A to M, the font has A to M — anything else would be invented rather than converted.
What do I actually get to download?
An installable OTF, a full-colour SVG of the traced artwork, one SVG per glyph, a font.css with an @font-face rule, a mapping.json of glyphs to code points, a specimen.html, and a README with install instructions for macOS, Windows and Linux.
What happens if the letters cannot be separated reliably?
The review step opens so you can confirm the segmentation, instead of the tool reporting a clean conversion it is not sure about.
Can I turn a logo or a single symbol into a font?
Yes. A single piece of artwork becomes one icon glyph, mapped into the Unicode Private Use Area at U+E001 so it never collides with a real character.
Can I use it on a phone?
Yes. It runs in mobile Safari and Chrome, and you can photograph your lettering directly. Installing a font system-wide on iOS additionally requires a font manager app, because Apple installs fonts through configuration profiles.

Guides and font styles

Longer walkthroughs of each kind of conversion, and editorial pages on what gives well-known type styles their character and how to draw original letters with those qualities.