CORELDRAW
Version tested: 25.2.1.313 (September 2024 release)
Operating system tested: PC
Tested: 03 January 2025 / Missy Meyer
Cost: $299.00 flat fee (Standard Edition) / $549 flat fee or $22.42/month (Graphics Suite)
Where to get it: https://www.coreldraw.com/en/product/coreldraw/standard/
Demo version: Yes, 15 days
Font file types to use: TTF/OTF, double stroke
Image file types to use: SVG
How to See & Use the Fonts
First, make sure that the font is installed on your computer or device. Check the “Install fonts on [operating system]” guides for more information.
I grabbed the 15-day trial of CorelDRAW to create this guide, and I’m pleasantly surprised by how it handles single-line fonts! I didn’t have to use any outside programs in order to do everything I wanted to do.
The first thing I’d like you to do, if you haven’t done it already, is open up your Text and Glyphs panels. Do this by going to Window > Dockers > Text and Window > Dockers > Glyphs from the top menu bar. (As you can see, there are also keyboard shortcuts to open up those two menus, if you’re a shortcut person.)
Now, to type! Click on the text tool, the letter A icon in the left menu. You can select your font in the top information area. For this example, I’ll be using Muggsy Sketch 2, which is the double stroke version of Muggsy Sketch.
I can see the sample text I’ve typed, but it’s really light and hard to see. Let’s fix that.
You can simply choose a new stroke weight in the drop-down menu next to the outlined A (blue arrow). Or you can click on the three dots to the right of that line (red arrow) to pop open the Outline Pen menu, which will give you a lot more options. Here you can choose whether you see rounded ends or squared ends on the strokes, and make all kinds of finer adjustments to the stroke applied to the text.
Once you have your text typed, you’ll want to separate the letters so you can resize, rotate, and otherwise arrange them. To do that, click on Object > Convert to Curves from the top bar menu. Be aware, this will make it so that the letters are vector objects, and can no longer be edited with the type tool.
At this point, the text will all be one big object. To split the letters out separately, select the text and go to Object > Break Curve Apart in the top menu. This will make each stroke its own separate object.
The only thing to keep in mind here as you rearrange and modify the letters is that since each stroke is its own thing, letters made up of more than one stroke may get their parts separated. Here I’ve colored in the strokes of the A, T, and X so you can see how they’re individual objects. Just be sure to select all parts of a letter before moving it around.
Once your design is complete, you can save it to a vector file format. Go to File > Save As… from the top menu.
This will give you the Save Drawing pop-up. There are a ton of file types to choose from in the “Save as type” drop-down menu! You’ll most likely want to choose SVG, since that’s the format that most other programs can open and use. But if you know you need a specific other type of file, you do you!
Once you’ve selected your file type, named your file, and chosen where to save it to, click the “Save” button.
How to Access Alternates, Ligatures, and Extended Character Sets
Now, let’s talk about alternate versions of letters, ligatures, and other extras in fonts! Some fonts will have these extras coded in; the example font, Muggsy Sketch, is one of those.
Here I’ve typed out BUGGY with the intention of replacing the two letters G with the double-letter ligature. However, CorelDRAW has automatically replaced those Gs with the ligature for me!
If you’d like to turn off that auto-replacement, click on this bar with a wee downward-pointing triangle to expand the Character panel.
You’ll see a bunch of new icons down below; ligatures are almost always indicated by an icon with this “fi” ligature. Here you can see that it’s got a white box around it, while all of the other icons here don’t; that means it’s selected. Just click on that little guy to turn it off!
I’ve unselected it so that the icon is no longer white, and the two Gs in my text have reverted to being exactly the same.
Now, you can manually add in alternates, ligatures, and any other extras coded into the font.
Click on the Glyphs menu tab on the right (blue arrow). If you don’t have the Glyphs tab here, go to Window > Dockers > Glyphs from the top bar menu to add it to your docked panels.
This will get you a grid that shows you all of the glyphs included in a font. If the grid is too small, there’s a slider down at the bottom (red arrow) that lets you size it up. With a single-line font, the letters will appear a bit faint, but even with my squinty eyesight, they’re still pretty visible.
I’ve highlighted the two Gs, then scrolled down to the bottom to get to the alternates and ligatures, and I’ll double-click on that GG ligature to replace my highlighted selection with that character.
Same thing with alternates; I highlighted the regular U, then found an alternate U in the grid. Double-clicked on that alternate, and it replaced the regular U with this smaller and cuter one.
Once you have all of your chosen characters in place, then follow the same steps up above to convert the letters to vector curves, and then split apart the curves into individual objects. Arrange, then save!
How to Use SVG or Other Alphabet Sets
Some fonts will come with an SVG file that contains the full character set of the font, in case you prefer it! Our example font, Muggsy Sketch, now comes with one of those.
If your chosen font has one, go to File > Import from the top bar menu in order to import that file into CorelDRAW.
You’ll get a pop-up Import panel that allows you to navigate to where the file is living, select it, then click the Import button at the bottom right.
You’ll get this funny little text thingy; it’s basically telling you that it has the file all loaded up and ready to go, it just needs to know where you want to place it. You can pretty much just click anywhere, and it’ll load in the file!
You’ll get the full character set of the font dropped into your document. It may drop it in really large, but you can always grab one of the corners of the selection box and drag it toward the middle of the selection box in order to shrink your selection down.
At this point, CorelDRAW will only let you select the whole character set as one big object. Double-click anywhere on that selection, and you’ll get this “Layer 1” indicator. When this appears, you can select each individual letter and move it around to your heart’s content.
You can now click and drag the letters you want to use over to the side of your work area. Once you have all of the letters you want, drag a selection box around the rest and delete them from your artboard.
Now you can resize, rotate, and arrange the letters. But oh, what’s this? Part of the E is missing!
No worries, it isn’t actually missing; this is just a visual thing. Because this character set contains the true single stroke versions of the letters, most programs (Corel included) like to connect the start point and end point with a straight line, then fill that area in with a fill color. Because the fill is white, we haven’t been able to see it against the white background. It only shows up when we have something else behind that fill.
I’ve changed the fill color to yellow so you can see the areas it’s filing in. There isn’t any part of that E that’s missing; it’s just tucked behind that fill in the L. You can turn off the fill easily – just click on this box along the bottom, next to the pouring paint can icon.
Clicking on that box brings up the Edit Fill panel. You can change it to any other color you want, or to turn it off, just click on this box with the X in the upper left. That turns the fill invisible.
And here we are with invisible fill, so that all letters can be seen. Now the design is ready to be saved to SVG as explained above!
If this program has been updated since this test and this guide no longer works, please drop me a line at the contact form so I can update this page!