Non-Western Alphabets and Design Space

Working at Michaels, I've seen a lot of T-shirts, hats, and sashes that say "Bride", "Bridesmaid", "Team Bride", and so on. I've also seen a lot of Bar and Bat Mitzvah favors that say something like

David's Bar Mitzvah

3-16-18

Regency Hotel

Mazel Tov!

That's fun if you're Reform, Conservative, or have many non-Jewish friends and family attending. But what about my friends and customers who are more "Observant" — a heading which includes Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Chassidic, and/or Haredi — customers who, if they wear T-shirts (and some of them might) would prefer to have that done up in Hebrew lettering? What about modern versions of the aprons my mother and grandmother wore growing up, embroidered in Hebrew with the words "Yom Tov" (holiday) or "Shabbat" (Sabbath), or the towels and potholders labeled "Milchig" (dairy) or "Fleischig" (meat) in the local Judaica shop? 

Wouldn't it be fun to do those up on the Cricut?

And that's just Hebrew. How about my Muslim customers, my Russian customers, my Asian customers... people who speak and observe their religions in languages not served by the Western alphabet?

It's possible, but it may take a bit of a workaround.

Since my linguistic vocabulary is limited to a few Hebrew and Yiddish (which uses a variation of the Hebrew alef-bet) words and phrases, my examples will be taken from those languages. 

Getting the Right Fonts

On the plus side, Windows (and I presume Mac OS) operating systems include access to the full Unicode character set for many typefaces, which means (in theory) I could use Character Map to bring up my characters, copy them, and paste them into Illustrator, Photoshop, or Design Space. Unfortunately, my current version of Windows and my old version of Adobe Creative Suite don't always talk the same typeface language (Open Text versus the older PostScript and TrueType), so it's a bit hit-and-miss as to what's available where, and whether or not the font designer added in a Hebrew character set.

At least for Hebrew, a quick way of learning if the typeface supports it is to load a blank document into Word or Photoshop, select a text area (or text tool), and look at your font dropdown menu. In Word, the typeface's primary alternate character set will be on the right, in the direction that language is usually read. In Photoshop, typefaces with code pages for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Hebrew alphabets will show up organized into sections below the main list of typefaces, with a few characters from each to show how the typeface looks in that codepage.

A more thorough (but tedious) way to check if any individual typeface has a particular character set is to go into Windows' built-in Character Map, select your font, and scroll down through the code pages. While your primary language can be directly entered from the keyboard, your alternate-alphabet language may have to be loaded by searching for your character by Windows' name for it, or by scrolling down to your desired character and double-clicking. 

Windows Paint, Photoshop Workarounds

If I try to upload a text file into Design Space, it'll get rejected — and I can't save a Windows document to an image format Design Space supports. But outside of Illustrator, Photoshop, and Design Space, there's no good way to turn text into images, except by screen capture. For me, the easiest way to save a screencap is to paste it into Windows Paint, crop out the extraneous information, and save it. (I could use Photoshop, but for something that quick and simple, I don't need Photoshop's long load time and large system overhead.)

Because I'd been having font issues in Illustrator, I did some basic composition in Word, capturing my screen and pasting it into Windows Paint, cropping down to my text, saving in .png format, and importing into Design Space. 

Example: "Sandek" (one of the godfathers (usually the grandfathers) at a brit-millah). Typeface: Frank Ruehl.

Layers and Effects

I hoped I'd be able to get around some of those codepage issues once I added Hebrew and Yiddish languages into Windows, but there are still things I can't do directly. As an example, I can get a very even large outline around a letter in Illustrator by duplicating the letter, adding a heavy stroke to the duplicate, and placing it behind the original letter. Unfortunately, saving the file in .svg causes Design Space to lose the stroke information, and I get two identical copies of the same letters.

Example: "Kallah" (bride). Original design as created in Illustrator. Typeface: Rod Regular.

Example: "Kallah". How Design Space interprets the .svg file

I found two ways to get the correct layering. The first was to export each layer individually as a .png file, import them into Design Space as cut-only images, load them both onto my design mat, resize them and align them to line up correctly.

Correctly aligned layers in Design Space

The second way was to export my design to Photoshop, color the bottom layer text the same as the stroke color, and save each layer separately in .jpg format.

Typing Text Directly

It's not impossible to use non-Western fonts directly in Design Space, but I will note an issue with non-left-to-right codepages: when I've selected Hebrew as my system language, Design Space (as well as Photoshop and Illustrator) will render Hebrew correctly right-to-left, but in order to have a legible, legitimate word, I have to type in my characters left to right.

"Kallah" rendered as typed in Design Space. Typeface: David Regular

As you can see, my text is entered correctly from right to left, but the characters are rendered left to right. For Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, or other right-to-left words to appear correct, I need to enter them in reverse order.

"Kallah" properly rendered, typed in reverse order.

Some Final Notes...

Being unfamiliar with the usual way of entering "pointed" characters,  I had to use Character Map and scroll down to the very bottom of the code page to find the Kaf with the dagesh — the dot in the middle — that differentiates it from a Khaf.

Because one of the things I was looking for going into this exercise was images for Rosh Hashanah, I found what appears to be a good source for Jewish, Muslim, and other religious and ethnic graphics. The images are not free, but they're reasonably priced, and the site doesn't require a paid subscription to look at the packages.

The fun font for "David's Bar Mitzvah" is "Bungee Shade" from Google Fonts, which is a collection of typefaces Google publishes for Web use.