Detailed Guide to Machine Embroidery Fonts
Choosing the right type of embroidery fonts for the right purpose has become a challenge for many embroidery digitizing businesses. Thanks to the multitude of font types, embroidery digitizing businesses seem to be lost for their choices.
Here in this blog, we will be taking you through all the details you need to know about machine embroidery fonts, the pros and cons of each font, and the best use of individual fonts for embroidery purposes.
So, without wasting any time, let’s get started!
Why do Embroidery Fonts Matter?
As one of the leading digitizing agencies, we started our journey almost a decade back. Even then, our primary goal for all embroidery digitizing jobs was to achieve the best visual appeal from the embroidery designs and optimize the design for machine-embroidery to maximize production.
Now, as for the visual appeal of the design, the key is to understand the influence of lettering in the design, which, interestingly, is even more significant than the actual embroidery design. This is especially true for logo digitizing, where even the most intricate logo design can look sloppy without the right lettering.
Not to forget, back in the days, we didn’t have the multitude of choices that we have today, which was basically liberating; despite being a limiting factor.
Nonetheless, the crux here is to understand that not all machine embroidery fonts are created equal and that you have to choose the right fonts for the right design to achieve the most exquisite final product.
To better understand why some fonts bring in a more aesthetic appearance than others, let’s get into some details of different fonts.
Stitch File Fonts
Let’s start our understanding of fonts with stitch file fonts, which are single-letter embroidery designs. Stitch file fonts are digitized and transformed into embroidery machine formats, including JEF, PES, etc. What this means is that these aren’t your regular keyboard fonts, which you can type using Keyboard.
Since these are created by digitizing the fonts, stitch file fonts have a certain size and only appear best when used as per their original size.
Resizing the stitch file fonts is not recommended since it results in lower-quality embroidery. Also, these fonts aren’t easy to edit, and only the most experienced digitizers can handle the editing of stitch file fonts.
Stitch file fonts offer a great visual appearance; however, their biggest downside is that these are not keyboard-based fonts, which greatly restricts their use. If you do decide to go with stitch file font, each letter would have to be created individually in the digitizing software and arranged manually, making the entire process too tedious for the liking of many embroidery digitizing businesses. This is also one reason why stitch file fonts are not widely used in the industry.
Fonts included in Digitizing Software and Embroidery Machines
Going with fonts included in digitizing software and embroidery machines is a far better option than stitch file fonts. These are easy-to-use fonts that come in a variety of styles and work great for stitches. However, the only downside here is that these should be used as per the developers’ recommended size.
The biggest benefit of using these fonts is that since they are already included in the digitizing software package, it becomes highly time-effective for digitizers to use them for embroidery purposes. However, there’s a catch here. Each digitizing software offers proprietary fonts, which can only be used with that brand. For instance, the fonts offered by Brother Digitizing software will be exclusive to the Brother software and will work best with Brother embroidery machine, whereas embroidery machines from other brands may not be able to read these fonts. These are also called Native File Formats, which are meant to restrict the cross-software / cross-machine use of fonts.
Adding New Fonts to Digitizing Software
While each standard digitizing software comes with a unique set of built-in fonts, it’s always handy to add more fonts just to have a bit of customization options, right?
Now, technically you can really add new fonts to your digitizing software; instead, you would have to purchase one of the three primary types of fonts, including;
- ESA
- BX
- True Type
While none of these font types are proprietary, still some work better with one brand than others. Below is a non-exhaustive list of fonts that you can add to different digitizing software, along with the proprietary fonts that come built-in with the software.
Floriani Embroidery Software - TrueType Fonts
Brother PE-Design Embroidery Software - TrueType Fonts
Embird Embroidery Software - TrueType Fonts
Masterworks III Embroidery Software - TrueType Fonts
Hatch Embroidery Software - ESA & TrueType Fonts
Premier Plus Embroidery Software - TrueType Fonts
Janome V.5 Embroidery Software - ESA & TrueType Fonts
DIME Embroidery Software - TrueType Fonts
Wilcom E3 & E4 Embroidery Software - ESA & TrueType Fonts
Bernina Embroidery Software - TrueType Fonts
Now that we have the best font types for some of the most widely used embroidery digitizing software let’s move on and see each of these font types in more detail.
TrueType Embroidery Fonts (TTF)
True Type Embroidery Fonts or TTF can be installed in any of the above recommended digitizing software. These are more like auto-digitizing lettering files, which are automatically converted to embroidery designs when used. Digitizing software like Hatch or Floriani is able to optimally use these fonts, automatically creating the embroidery designs when stitched with TTF.
On the downside of True Type Fonts, these may not create all alphabets logically. To put into perspective, the letter “t,” when digitized using TTF, is more like a telephone pole than the actual letter. That’s because the TTF cannot imitate the logical path you would take to create the letter “t.” Similarly, any complex letter would be hard to create in TTF and may result in errors.
To put it simply, the quality of letters in TTF is directly influenced by the shape of the letters (the more complex the shape, the greater the chances of error).
BX Embroidery Fonts
BX embroidery fonts is a great innovation that enables digitizers to quickly type out letters in proprietary digitizing software.
These fonts are widely used by digitizers due to their efficiency and appeal of the fonts. These are easy to create fonts, which even digitizers with little experience can use. However, on the downside, since these are easy to use, many immature digitizers excessively use these fonts with poor digitizing sense, resulting in a market that’s flooded with poorly designed embroidery.
ESA Embroidery Fonts
ESA or Embroidery Specific Alphabets represents the most advanced and highly customizable type of embroidery fonts available in the market.
The Embroidery Specific Alphabets or ESA fonts have been around for a long time; it’s just that it isn’t gathered much attention by many digitizing software. In fact, ESA fonts are one of the top reasons why WILCOM has dominated the commercial embroidery industry for a very long time.
Some of the features that make ESA fonts stand out amongst the others include;
- ESA fonts join the closest point
- These can be used with fabric assist
- These are extremely convenient and responsive to resize
- ESA fonts are highly customizable and easy to edit
To put it simply, ESA fonts are the best machine embroidery fonts and a game-changer in the embroidery industry.
Takeaway!
Embroidery digitizing has become the mainstay of the embroidery industry. In the last decade, the digitizing industry has seen large-scale advancement in all aspects, including the availability of machine embroidery fonts. Today, various types of machine embroidery fonts are available for experienced digitizers to put their skills to the test. However, unless you are working with software that supports ESA fonts, we highly recommend only using built-in fonts that come with the digitizing software (especially if you are looking to add BX or True Type fonts).
