How to Use FontCloud with Cricut Design Space

Introduction on Using FontCloud with Design Space

I am beyond excited about this program & I know you will be too once you’ve read this post! This program has so many benefits like… having all your fonts together, knowing which fonts have glyphs, seeing how they look & copying those glyphs to other programs. The best thing about the program is it’s free to use! So, let me show you how to use FontCloud with Cricut Design Space (DS). Let’s get to it…⬇️

How to Start With FontCloud

First thing to know, this program is with Creative Fabrica, which I love! I have a subscription for many years out because their all-access subscription was so cheap! They do have a lot of freebies though to use without a subscription! Like I said, FontCloud is free to use, but you do need to make an account. So we need to either sign you in or sign you up.

If you are interested in purchasing a subscription to get your graphics, fonts, SVG’s, etc. for free click here for a subscription. Otherwise, click here to just sign-up & use the Fontcloud program. The “sign up” button is at the top. After that is complete, go to the menu & click on “tools”. You will see “Fontcloud” as an option so click there. Click on “open FontCloud” next. This will bring up something like the pic below, but you won’t have any fonts loaded in there yet.

How to Choose a Free Font in FontCloud

I’ll show you how to download a “freebie” font from Creative Fabrica onto your computer & then how to get it into FontCloud. First, we need to go back out to the home page of Creative Fabrica to get a “freebie” font. So at the top right click on the icon that looks like a little person then click on “account”.

You can either purchase a font you like or choose a “freebie” which is what I’ll show you. On the right side, you’ll see “freebies” & “gifts”. Click on “freebies” & then “free fonts”. (The best thing about Creative Fabrica is that whatever you purchase or get as a freebie you get a commercial license with it!)

Now, scroll down until you find one you like that looks like it has the pretty characters in the font name. (I’m picking one called “Beautiful” for this post, but the freebies change all the time. Make sure to keep checking back to find the latest freebies!) Once you click on that font, scroll down until you see a box that says “view all glyphs” & click on that. See pic below.

Next, scroll down till you get to the highlighted boxes. These will be your pretty glyphs you’re looking for! If this has the kind of glyphs you want then choose that font if not look for another one.

How to Download Fonts to Your Computer

After choosing a font, on the main page of that font, look for the “download” button. See pic below.

This will take you to your file explorer where you normally download files. Everyone is different depending on their computer. This file will be a zip file. Right click your mouse & click on “extract all”.

Now you will have a plain file folder with the same name as the zip file, unless you changed it. Click on that file folder. You normally get two files for a font. A “otf” & a “ttf”. I always pick the “otf” because it has the most glyphs, but either of the files are good.

So click on the file & right click your mouse & pick “install”. Now that font is installed on your computer. It automatically comes up in DS’s system fonts but you have to open DS AFTER you install the font.

How to Download Fonts to FontCloud

Let’s go back into FontCloud. On the home screen of FontCloud you’ll see “Browse” on the bottom left. See pic below.

This will bring up your file explorer again. Go to the same file folder that had the “otf” file in it. Click on that file then click “open”. It will then download into FontCloud. Easy as that! With all the fonts on your computer this is how you’ll download them into your FontCloud account. (You don’t have to do them all at once, but if you do, it goes pretty fast.) You can also drag & drop the file into FontCloud.

Previewing Fonts in FontCloud

If you already know what words you want to use in your project you can enter them in the preview area that is circled in pic below. Then when you scroll down, you’ll be able to see what those words look like in every font you have. Isn’t that awesome!

How to Know if a Font has Glyphs

Once you click on a specific font you’ll see on the right, in pic below, where it shows how many glyphs that font has & it will bring them all up.

Scroll down until you see the blue boxes & that’s where all the prettiness starts! (These are called PUA encoded characters.) See pic below.

Transferring Glyphs to Design Space

So go to Design Space & type something like “Happy Birthday” & change the font to the new font you just downloaded. If it doesn’t come up make sure 1- you opened DS after you installed the font & 2- make sure you’re looking under “system” fonts. Then click back to FontCloud.

Scroll down again till you see the highlighted boxes where all the pretty glyphs are. Click on a character that you want to use in DS. You’ll get a notice up top that says “copied to clipboard”.

Next, you are supposed to be able to put your cursor where you want the letter or character to be, & then back-space erasing that letter & “paste”. I haven’t had much luck that way. So try it that way first & if that doesn’t work…read on. This is what I’ve done to get around this; I typed out “appy birthda”, because I want to use an “h” & a “y”. Then start a new “text” box & paste the glyph into that. See below.

Now move the glyph up to the words that are typed out.

Next I’ll do the same thing with the “y”. Then you’ll want to select the whole thing & “unite” or “weld” like below.

NOTE: With other programs, I’ve been able to use the copy & paste method with no problem. I think it’s different with every font & different with every program. You’ll just have to play with it to see what works. When I started this post, the font I was using, neither method would work so I switched my font!

Summary on Using FontCloud with Design Space

To summarize how to use FontCloud with Design Space… I LOVE this program. It’s nice to have all my fonts in one orderly place. I love that I can see all the glyphs with each font & that you can preview your writing with each font you have. For me, this tool has been so fun to use & I hope it will be for you too! If you are interested in learning about using glyphs with a character map, see my post “How to Get Those Magical Characters Called Glyphs to Use in Cricut Design Space”.

Answers to some other questions about FontCloud:

Q: Can you use the “ttf” file if the font doesn’t come with the “otf” file?
A: Absolutely, yes! I just always use the “otf” file because that usually has more characters, but the “ttf” file is good too.

Q: Can you delete fonts from FontCloud?
A: Yes. In the list of all your fonts, click on the three dots on the right of the particular font & click “delete”.

Q: Can you use FontCloud with other programs besides DS?
A: Yes! It can be used on Windows, Mac, Photoshop, & various other social platforms, operating systems, & software. Fontcloud can even be used on Iphone, Ipad & Android devices.

If you liked this post, please share it on social media & I would love it if you followed me while you were there! I would appreciate it so much! Thank you! Comment below on any experiences you’ve had with FontCloud or tips to use it! 💕