Preferred Format for Custom Fonts?

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I’m building my first watchface with a Custom Font. It displays fine within the world of Facer, but it doesn’t display on my watch. The fonts are open for all uses and I can upload them as TTF, OTF, or WOFF. Is one of these format choices better than others? If the font is Unicode-compliant, does that mean the character set is too large? Is there an upper limit on the number of glyphs (characters) in a font? Thanks, Chris

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Welcome @ChrisEverett

Only TTF
Try to synchronise any other watch face where the font to be loaded is used (another user).

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Thank you for the quick reply, @lucky.andrei!

Fortunately, I did upload the TTF format. It’s an out-of-the-box full font, so it includes more than the basic character set. It has the Greek characters — plus the Hungarian and Czech accent characters, etc.

If necessary, I can remove the extra characters — I’m a font designer, so I have Fontographer and FontLab font-editing tools — but I was trying to minimize the number of variables in this (my first attempt at using a custom font).

I would try to sync with another watchface where the font is used by another user, but how on earth could I find that information?

Is there a list anywhere that shows which custom fonts have been used successfully? I was trying to use “Oswald” — it’s a very compressed sans-serif font that is available in a variety of weights (XtraLight through XtraBold). If there’s a different compressed sans-serif that has been used successfully, I’d be happy to try that.

With the limited space on a watchface, I’m surprised that more people aren’t using a highly-legible compressed sans-serif font — we could all benefit from that.

Thanks again, lucky.andrei

Regards, Chris

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For example.On the left side of the buttons there will be a small rocket and press it to enter view mode. Just open this watch face in a new window or browser tab.

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Thanks, @lucky.andrei — this was enormously helpful!

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Hey @lucky.andrei — I really appreciate your patience. Your examples were helpful in confirming that the concept of custom fonts work.

If I find someone’s design (yours, for example) includes fonts that work, I can use those fonts only if I download them and then upload them as a custom font in my own design, right? The font may exist in the Facer universe, but I can’t access that font in my design unless I also upload the same font from my own system.

Except for the Bold version, I cannot find any of other weights of the BebaNeue font unless I purchase those variants. Is there a source you can recommend that has free versions of Beba or Beba Neue? For what it’s worth, I couldn’t find Morganite_Book anywhere.

The Oswald font that I was trying to use is freely available (in all of its weights) from Google fonts and many other online sources… and yet I cannot get it to work with Facer.

It seems like such a crapshoot. I can’t tell which font will work until I upload it, watch it display correctly in the design, and then discover it doesn’t work when I try to install the design on my watch. Did you have to go through this trial-and-error process for each font you used in your own watchfaces?

Thanks again, Andrei. I hope I’m not being a pest with all of my questions. I looked through your catalog of designs — very nice — and see a lot of inspiration there.

Regards, Chris

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I have already collected a library of fonts.
Sometimes I pick up fonts here Bebas Neue Font | dafont.com

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Usually, the fonts that satisfy me are suitable for design, unless they are OTF fonts.

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Hey @lucky.andrei —

Thank you again. The DaFont website was one of the first places I went. The Light and Thin versions of Bebas Neue may have been available at one time, but those font weights are no longer available except if you buy the font — and even then, their new permissions no longer allow the fonts to be uploaded. You were lucky to get those fonts for your personal library before their latest revision.

The DaFont website suggests using the Adobe Creative Cloud fonts. I have access to the Adobe CC fonts, but you can only access those fonts while logged in. None of their fonts reside on your local machine and there is no way to download them. Since you cannot download the Adobe CC fonts, you cannot upload them anywhere.

I also have a library of several thousand fonts (including hundreds of TTF fonts) — I’m a graphic designer. Like yourself, I could find TTF fonts that satisfy me and that are suitable for design (such as the Oswald font I tried to use)… but do I have to go through a trial-and-error process of uploading hundreds of fonts to figure out which ones will work with Facer? Is there any way to know which of my TTF fonts are configured properly for Facer? I routinely use these fonts will Illustrator, Photoshop, CorelDraw, MS Office, website, etc., but for some reason, those same fonts may or may not work with Facer. It’s very frustrating.

Again, I don’t expect you to have all the answers… but I still don’t understand the system.

When you first used your font choices, did they always work on the first attempt? Or did you have some fonts that worked and others that did not? Did you have to go through this trial-and-error method?

Many thanks for your help.

Regards, Chris

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SUCCESS! I just uploaded Barlow Condensed TTF — available from Google Fonts — and it worked perfectly. Maybe there was just a glitch with Oswald.

Thanks again, Andrei

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I was lucky and almost all the fonts I used matched the first time. In any case, I did not have any particular problems.

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Fine. By the way, if you can’t load a font in the creator of a watch face, you can still use it as graphics. This is a bit more complicated, but you can use the following technique

You can make graphics from the font using this library GitHub - gregoiresage/fitfont: Custom font module for Fitbit OS

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