Fonts often come with extras—glyphs, special characters, various letterforms, flourishes, ligatures, stylistic alternatives, and more! Here’s how to use these glyphs in Cricut Design Space to make your designs even more unique.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: 1/27/20: It looks like copying glyphs from the character map is not working with the new Cricut Design Space desktop app, though it sounds like a fix is in the works. If I get an update on when it might be working, I’ll share here.
I love working with fonts, particularly when I’m crafting with my Cricut. One of my favorite things about fonts is using “special characters”—these are the different glyphs, ligatures, and other stylistic alternatives that come with (most often paid) fonts.
What is a Glyph?
A glyph is a specific form of a letter or number. Think of a letter A with several different stylistic options, like in the font Cherryla:
This font, for instance, has more than 375 different letter and number glyphs! That means that it’s so much more customizable than a font with a more basic alphabet.
Today we’re going to talk about accessing all of those alternate characters in Cricut Design Space so you can make your designs even more unique! This post will cover how to use these different characters on both your Mac and PC!
Looking to do this in Silhouette Studio? My friend Alexis wrote about using glyphs in her big Silhouette Studio fonts post.
What Are These Things Called?
I could NOT figure out what non-designers might call these “fancy letters.” Technically they are glyphs, but I’m not sure the general user knows them by that name. You might call them:
- Glyphs
- Stylistic Alternatives
- Special Characters
- Letterforms
- Alternate or Alternative Characters
- Stylistic Options
- Swashes, swirls, or swooshes
- Flourishes or flounces
- Font Extras
- Ligatures (see the bottom of this post for more info)
- Those Fonts With the Swooshy Thingies
For this tutorial, I’ll be using the font Heartbeat Script, which has more than 630 alternates! Once you’ve uploaded your fonts to your Mac, you can access the base (not-so-fancy) font directly in Design Space using the dropdown menu.
Start by typing out your word in Design Space and selecting your font. Yes, the letter spacing in Design Space is terrible, but we’ll fix that later (you can also see this post, though you don’t want to fix your font until you have all the special characters inserted!).
Glyphs in Cricut Design Space—Mac
To access the special characters on your Mac, open up the FontBook application (this is standard on Mac computers—you will not need to download anything). Use the search bar at the top to search for the font you are using, in this case Heartbeat.
This will pull up the Heartbeat font. Select the second icon in the upper left corner and this will show you all the letterforms for the font.
You can adjust the size of the letters using the vertical slider on the right of the window.
From here, you can select the glyph you’d like to use and copy it using Cmd-+C or going to Edit > Copy in the menu bar at the top. Then go to Cricut Design Space and paste your glyph (Cmd-V or Edit > Paste).
Note that in the text box, your glyph will look like a little box, but you will see the actual glyph on your Canvas.
Continue until you’ve changed all the letters you want to change.
See the end of this post for how to make that nonsense look like an actual word!
I will be the first to admit that the FontBook is not particularly user-friendly (then again, I find it easier than the PC, as you’ll see below), but it works.
Glyphs in Cricut Design Space—PC
The process for finding glyphs on your PC is similar to a Mac. Start by opening the Character Map program on your PC. This comes with PCs running Windows software—you do not need to download anything.
Then use the dropdown to select the Heartbeat font.
Now comes the trickier part. There are a lot of characters that show up in this character map in addition to the glyphs in the Heartbeat font. And I mean A LOT. Hundreds of letters, characters, and symbols from all sorts of languages. Finding the glyphs for this font took some scrolling—notice in the vertical scroller on the right of the window, above, that it’s nearly at the bottom. It took me a while to find them because there were SO many other characters.
Once you have found your glyphs, double click the letter, which will put it in the little “characters to copy” box at the bottom of the Character map. Then click “copy” and paste it into your text box in Design Space. Continue until you’ve replaced all your letters:
See the next section for how to rework the letters to be an actual word.
Making it Pretty
Then use the tips from my Working with Script Fonts post to get those letters exactly where they should be. I straight-up used the Ungroup to Letters function and placed all of the letters together myself—super easy!
Alternative to FontBook & Character Map—FontBase
Because I don’t find the FontBook (Mac) and the Character Map (PC) to be all that user-friendly, I went searching for a desktop app that would make using glyphs easier. I found FontBase, which works really well for accessing glyphs…for $3 a month. It’s definitely an option if you’re using a lot of glyphs.
It’s a cool program even outside the glyphs, though—you can sort and categorize all of your fonts, making it easy to find fonts to use in your Cricut projects, even if you’re like me and are sitting on more than 1000 fonts in your library.
Another option is to use Adobe Illustrator, my preferred design program. You can read my tutorial for Using Glyphs in Adobe Illustrator if that interests you!
More Cricut Design Space Font Tutorials
I’ve written about fonts in Cricut Design Space quite a few times. You might find some of these posts helpful:
- How to Upload Fonts to Cricut Design Space (read this before this post!)
- Font Basics in Cricut Design Space
- Working with Script Fonts in Cricut Design Space
- How to Curve Text in Cricut Design Space
- 101 Fonts for Cutting Machines
- Where to Find Cheap and Free Fonts for the Cricut
Comments & Reviews
misty says
If you use the keyboard shortcuts instead of the right mouse button it works no problem! Thanks for the tutorial!
Daphne says
Thanks for the update on it no longer working. I was losing my mind! Wonder if the new update will fix this?
Allyson says
Ctrl+V worked for me! Thank you!
Allyson
tracy says
I am on a PC and I have followed all the steps but there is no way to paste it into design space…. am i missing somerthing?
Jacquie says
Once you have the word selected with the text box open in Design Space you should be able to right-click and paste or use the keyboard shortcut (CTRL + V) to paste the letter in the right place.
Amy Motroni says
Hi Tracy,
Have you tried using the shortcut of ctrl+V to paste?
We aren’t able to duplicate the issue on our end to try and troubleshoot!
Let me know if that helps!
Amy, HLMS Reader Support
Leslee Hughes says
I have been ‘fighting’ with Font Book using the ‘Hello’ script and cannot figure out how to ‘see’ the final product (as you say, the “pretty” word) and cannot figure out where the part is at the end of your tutorial as to how to do it…please explain! (and YES, I am a newbie!)
Amy Motroni says
Hi Leslee,
Here is the post for making the font “pretty”
Let me know if that helps!
Amy, HLMS Reader Support
Jacquie says
Did you get this to work? If not I posted a trick about using Microsoft Word. It’s quite simple and fixes the spacing issue. I really only use this trick if I’m using a script font and know I’m not changing the shape of the word at all.
brenda says
i am trying to copy and paste from character map into cricut and all i get is a question mark – not the glyph
Casey Coon says
Ok, I have a question, I want to use the STORYBOOK Cricut font which I originally purchased with my first Cricut so it was a cartridge with a keyboard overlay. How do I access the fancy scrolly pretty version of this font? It’s not in the character map. Thanks for any help you can provide.
Amy Motroni says
Hi Casey,
Have you tried linking your cartridge up with your machine?
This post might help:
https://heyletsmakestuff.com/cricut-explore-require-cartridges/
Joy says
Hey! Thank you for writing this tutorial! I assumed that these were special fonts. I do have a question though. I am on a PC trying to use character map – but there are MASSIVE gaps where the characters are not loading. I’ve waited and waited but they are still blank. I did try heartbeat (which i downloaded from ifonts.xyz and Magnolia Sky (i just guessed this one might have some glyphs) both were free for personal use. But maybe that means I also didn’t get the whole font. What do you think?
Jacquie says
Most free fonts do not come with glyphs or special characters. You have to purchase the entire font collection in order to have access to the extras. Check Fontbundles or Creative Market, they usually have the full font version of the free ones.
I did just learn that you can type the word in Microsoft Word and insert all the glyphs, then do a screenshot and open it in Design Space. This is great if you want connected letters in your script font with perfect spacing. It does have it’s limitations though if you’re wanting to curve the word. I will use Inkscape for that. The Microsoft Word trick is just a super quick way to do it if you’re in a pinch!
Michele Mina says
When I try to paste in design space it gives me a box with a question mark and it doesn’t paste.
Carey says
Mine is doing the same thing?
Melanie says
Mine as well. Any way to fix this?
Nicole Brashears says
Mine does this as well. Did anyone ever figure out this ?
Crystal Summers says
Hi Nicole,
Have you double checked that your text box in Cricut Design Space is using the same font that you are trying to cut and paste the glyph for? For example, if you’re adding a glyph for Magnolia Sky, you’ll want to make sure your text box in DS is set to Magnolia Sky. If another font is selected, you will receive the question mark. Let me know if that helps!
Happy crafting!
Crystal, HLMS Community Manager
Amanda Krause says
I checked mine and it’s the same font but giving me the black diamond with the question mark.
Jacquie says
I just learned it the black question mark would show up for one of two reasons:
1. The incorrect font is selected in the Design Space text box.
2. The letter/glyph you’re trying to copy & paste is not PUA encoded (you can check and see if it is in Font Book by hovering your mouse over the glyph, if it’s PUA encoded then a little box will pop up that says U+____ with a numeric code). (Creative Fabrica has a section on this in their font guide).
There is a work around if the glyph is not PUA encoded. You can use another program with Adobe Illustrator or MS PowerPoint to type the word and copy & paste glyphs. Then save the word and upload them into Design Space.
Kerri says
Any thoughts on how to do this on an iPad?
Cori George says
I don’t currently have a tutorial, but it’s on my to-write list! Be on the lookout! :)