Accessing Glyphs and Swashes in Silhouette Studio

You can access font glyphs right in Silhouette Studio. Font glyphs are available in the paid Designer Editions and Business Edition. Even if you are using the Basic Edition, we have a great workaround for you. Glyphs are fun characters designed to enhance your text containing swirls and shapes. In our tutorial we will show you how to access font glyphs in Silhouette Studio.

If you have the Basic Edition, have a look at how to use font glyphs on a PC or finding glyphs on a Mac.

We do have a video if you would prefer a visual guide instead.

Before we can begin, we first need to download and install our fonts on a PC or Mac. We will be using a PC during this tutorial. Our chosen font is this lovely modern calligraphy script but we have even more modern script fonts to choose from.

Step 1 - Add and Edit Text

Open Silhouette Studio and then go to the Text Tool on the left side toolbar. We have a detailed tutorial on adding and editing text in Silhouette Studio if needed. Click back on the canvas and start typing.

We then edited our text by changing the font and spacing using the Text Style panel on the right toolbar.

We will weld our text later to make it a single object but not until we are done editing.

Step 2 - Access the Font Glyphs

You will be able to access the glyphs using the same Text Style panel that was used to change the font. With the Text Style panel still open, go to the second icon from the left with the letter “G”.

You may need to type in your font name or select it from the drop down menu.

In this panel, when you scroll down you will find all of the glyphs available for your selected font. To add a glyph, you can highlight the specific letter you want to change or delete it. The position of your cursor is where the glyph will be placed. We will be using a fancy swirl “F”. Placing your cursor over the glyph will give you a bigger preview.

With the letter highlighted, click once on the glyph you want to use. The glyph will now replace the letter. Do this for all of the letters where you want to add glyphs to. If you find that you have clicked out of text edit mode, double click on the text to enter the mode again.

If you need a bigger preview of the glyph, simply change the preview size at the bottom of the panel.

If you need to, you can refer to your recently used glyphs for quicker access. This is also found near the bottom of the panel. Simply click on the glyph to add.

As you can see, the glyphs are overlapping. We will fix this in the next step.

Step 3 - Edit Text Spacing

While in some cases overlapping text looks great, sometimes you want a little extra space to balance everything out. Click back on the Text Style icon and go down to the bottom of the panel. Next to Line Spacing, use the arrows to adjust or input a value.

Resize your font by clicking on the Move Tool top right toolbar to activate the sizing handles. Now, click + drag one of the corner nodes in or out to resize the text.

For the final step, we want to weld the text so it will be one single object. To do this, right click > Weld.

Your text is now complete with glyphs and ready to be used in any of your projects.

Accessing and adding glyphs in Silhouette Studio has never been more convenient and easy. You can create beautiful projects by adding little touches to your text. Explore the various glyphs that come with your fonts and experiment with the fun designs.