What Fontself does

Fontself SAS is a privately held, founder-run software company (three co-founders: Franz Hoffman, Mohamed Ghenania, Joël Galeran) that builds font creation tools for creative professionals. Its core technology, Fontself Maker, is implemented as a panel-style extension for Adobe Illustrator CC and Photoshop CC that converts vector or bitmap letterforms into OpenType font files via a drag-and-drop workflow, supporting color vector (OpenType-SVG) and color bitmap fonts, kerning groups, ligatures, alternates, smart batch import, and font metric import/export. A standalone iPad application extends the same concept to touch-based creation with Apple Pencil. The tool is positioned as the accessible alternative to professional type editors such as FontLab and Glyphs, with version history spanning the 2016 initial release through major rewrites (2.0 in 2017, 3.0 in 2018) and an iPad 2.0 redesign in 2025.

The company monetizes Fontself Maker through one-time perpetual licenses sold direct (www.fontself.com/store), on the Adobe Exchange marketplace, and on the iOS App Store, with multi-user and volume licensing tiers for organizations and educational discounts for students and educators. Go-to-market is product-led and community-driven: a blog, help center, community forum, social channels, and the annual ColorFontWeek campaign showcase user-created fonts and build engagement. Primary customers are graphic designers, illustrators, lettering artists, calligraphers, and freelance designers who want custom typography without learning specialized type-design software, with occasional high-visibility users such as Ogilvy New York featured as case studies.

Fontself is bootstrapped, with its only disclosed capital event being a 2015 Kickstarter campaign that raised approximately $41,113 from 760 backers. Headcount is reported at 1–10. The legal entity, Fontself SAS, is incorporated under French law with its registered office in Paris (the company also lists Renens, Switzerland as a city in firmographics). There is no evidence of venture or institutional investment, no acquisitions, no parent company, and no public filings; accordingly, no revenue, ARR, or valuation is disclosed.

Name

Fontself

Legal name

Fontself SAS

Website

https://fontself.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2006

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Fontself SAS builds drag-and-drop font creation extensions for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, plus a standalone iPad app, targeting graphic designers, illustrators, lettering artists, and freelance designers who want to produce custom OpenType fonts without specialized type-design software.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Renens

HQ country

Switzerland

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Fontself Maker Software License: One-time perpetual license sales for Fontself Maker extension for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and the standalone iPad app. Multi-user and multi-seat license options available.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

Fontself develops and sells drag-and-drop font creation software that turns hand-drawn or designed letterforms into real OpenType font files. Its core products are Fontself Maker extensions for Adobe Illustrator CC and Adobe Photoshop CC, plus a standalone Fontself for iPad application, all sold as one-time perpetual licenses aimed at graphic designers, illustrators, and lettering artists who want to create custom (including color) fonts without learning professional type-design tools.

Product overview

Fontself is a font creation software company offering three core products: Fontself Maker for Adobe Illustrator CC and Fontself Maker for Adobe Photoshop CC (desktop extensions that integrate directly into the host applications), and a standalone Fontself for iPad application. All products share the same core drag-and-drop workflow for converting letterforms into OpenType font files, supporting both standard vector fonts and color fonts (OpenType-SVG format). The desktop extensions support advanced features including kerning, ligatures, alternates, spacing editing, and font family creation, while the iPad app provides mobile font creation with Apple Pencil support.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Fontself Maker: Font creation software extension for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, enabling users to create fonts through drag-and-drop functionality
• Fontself for iPad

Products and services

• Fontself Maker for Illustrator Adobe Illustrator CC extension that lets designers turn vector letterforms into real OpenType fonts through a drag-and-drop workflow, with support for color vector (OpenType-SVG) fonts, ligatures, alternates, kerning, and spacing controls. Sold as a one-time perpetual license via the Fontself web store and Adobe Exchange.
• Fontself Maker for Photoshop Adobe Photoshop CC extension that converts bitmap and vector letterforms into OpenType fonts with drag-and-drop simplicity, supporting color bitmap fonts that preserve handcrafted lettering. Sold as a one-time perpetual license via the Fontself web store and Adobe Exchange.
• Fontself for iPad Standalone iPad application that lets users draw letters with Apple Pencil and convert them into OpenType fonts, including color fonts, with instant vector conversion and font export. Distributed via the Apple iOS App Store as a one-time perpetual purchase.

Quantifiable outcome

• Two-click font creation process with instant font editing preview
• +1 more outcomes

Named customers10 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature10 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• AdobecoreTechnology or Integration · 23 October 2015Deep integration partnership with Adobe Creative Cloud. Fontself Maker is an extension for Illustrator CC and Photoshop CC, leveraging Adobe's APIs and being distributed through Adobe Exchange. The partnership enables font creation directly within the most widely used design tools.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Glyphs: Glyphs is a professional macOS font editor used by type designers to create OpenType fonts. It competes directly with Fontself in font creation, serving a more advanced/professional user than Fontself's drag-and-drop focus.
• Calligraphr: Calligraphr converts handwriting samples into installable fonts via a web app, similar in spirit to Fontself's drag-and-drop handwriting-to-font workflow. It targets the same calligrapher and lettering artist persona.
• RoboFont: RoboFont is a UFO-based font editor for macOS used by professional type designers. It is a direct competitor in the font editing space, though aimed at more technical users than Fontself.
• FontForge: FontForge is a free, open-source font editor available across platforms. It competes with Fontself at the accessibility/low-cost end of the market, particularly for hobbyist type designers.
• FontLab: FontLab (FontLab VI, FontLab 8) is an established professional font editor for type designers and foundries. It is the high-end incumbent that Fontself explicitly positions itself against by targeting non-specialists.
• Birdfont: Birdfont is a free, open-source font editor with iOS support, enabling font creation on iPad and desktop. It overlaps with Fontself's iPad-focused font creation use case at the lower-price end of the market.

Broad incumbents

• Affinity: Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher are professional creative tools competing broadly with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. They target the same graphic designer persona that Fontself serves, though Affinity does not currently host font creation extensions.
• Adobe: Adobe is the platform owner of Illustrator and Photoshop (Fontself's host applications) and runs Adobe Fonts and Adobe Exchange, through which Fontself is distributed. Adobe is both Fontself's largest enabler and its most consequential platform risk.
• Figma: Figma is the dominant collaborative design platform used by many of the graphic designers and brand teams in Fontself's customer segments. It is an adjacent ecosystem player rather than a direct font creation competitor, but increasingly influences where designers originate type assets.

Emerging players

• Procreate: Procreate is the leading iPad illustration app used heavily by the same lettering artists and illustrators who form Fontself's iPad user base. It is adjacent rather than directly competing, but targets an overlapping creative professional persona.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/fontself
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCdBBmUqEt3kEXPsg7nMOhPQ
• Facebookfacebook.com/FontselfApp
• Instagraminstagram.com/fontself
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/fontself

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Fontself