CRICUT DESIGN SPACE

Version tested: 8.53

Operating system tested: PC

Tested: 28 October 2024 / Missy Meyer

Cost: Free

Where to get it: https://design.cricut.com/

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’ll start out by saying that Cricut Design Space has had an issue with this type of font since around December 2021, so at the time of writing this guide, we’re going on 3 years of this program having known issues without any fixes. Fortunately, there’s a workaround!

After you’ve installed the font to your computer, start up Cricut Design Space and create a new project.

Click on the “Text” button on the left side of the screen. Cricut will create the word “Text” in its default font, Cricut Sans. To change the font, click on the “Cricut Sans” in the Font drop-down in the top menu (highlighted above).

The list of fonts available to choose from will default to Cricut’s library. Click on “System” to see all of the fonts you have installed to your computer instead. There’s also a “Bookmarked” option, where you can combine all your favorites from both your computer and Cricut’s library; just click on the flag on the right side of a font entry so that it turns green, and it will join your Bookmarked section.

Here in the System section, you can browse through your installed fonts in alphabetical order, or you can use the search bar to find a specific font name. I’ve searched for “sketcher” here to find my freebie, Spicy Sketcher. You can see here that I have both the single stroke (ending in the number 1) and double stroke (ending in the number 2) versions installed. For Cricut Design Space, choose the double stroke version. You should barely be able to see the thin lines of the letters in the preview box.

Selecting a font, whether from Cricut’s library or your System library, will change that “Text” placeholder to your chosen font.

Now you can highlight the text and delete it, and then type in whatever other text you like.  We’ll just use “Sample” as our example here.

I know there was a glitch with Cricut Design Space a while back, where this text wouldn’t show up at all when it was set as a “cut” project; and only showed up when you changed it to a “draw” project. So if your text is invisible at this point, just go to the “Operation” menu highlighted above, and change to either pen or foil.

Now, if you try to click on the “Make” button, you’ll likely get this ugly reddish-orange error message across the top of the screen. No worries, it’s all part of this weird 3-year-old glitch.

What you’ll need to do is disconnect the text and then reconnect it. So first, with your text selected, click on the “Advanced” option in the top menu, and then click on “Ungroup to Letters.” This will release each letter into its own individual object.

From here, you can have a bit of fun – resize each letter if you want to! (Since this is a stroke font and not an outline font, you can make them fatter or thinner or taller or shorter, and you don’t have to worry about the outline widths not matching.)  You can also rotate the letters and move them wherever floats your boat.

If you click on “Make” to send the design to your machine at this point, it’ll jumble the letters up. So there’s one more step to do.

With all of your separated letters selected together, click on “Attach” at the very bottom of the right side panel. This will keep your objects arranged exactly how you want.

And now you can Make!  Select your machine and your material, make sure your pen or stylus or quill is loaded, and hit Continue to send the design to your machine.

How to Access Alternates, Ligatures, and Extended Character Sets

Some fonts will have extras, such as multi-letter ligatures or alternate characters. The example font, Spicy Sketcher, has both of those.

It used to be that you’d need to copy and paste ligatures, alternates, and extended characters into Cricut Design Space. And oh my, was I surprised when I went to write up this section of the guide!

It’s hard to tell in this screenshot above, because the two-letter ligatures aren’t that different in Spicy Sketcher, but I typed out FIGGY PUDDING with the intent of replacing the GG and DD with their ligatures … and they were already there. Cricut Design Space is now defaulting to show ligatures if they’re coded into the font!

But here’s the problem: what if you don’t want the ligatures in there? I’ve poked around, and I’m not yet seeing a way to turn them off. Here’s an example with an easier to see font: I’ve typed out the word “chatter” in my Tropical Punch font, and instead of the base letters, it’s used the CH ligature, the ATT ligature, and the ER ligature.

In order to get the original base letters, I’ve had to add spaces between them. From here, I can use the “Ungroup to Letters” option, then move them closer together.

But this is a very weird choice on Cricut’s part.  If anyone knows how to switch off the auto-ligature replacement, please drop me a note and I’ll update this guide!

Anyhoo, you do still need to copy and paste in certain things from alternate sources; namely, alternate characters and any extras like dingbats or flourishes.

As an example, here I’m using MainType for PC to grab an alternate uppercase A. (As a Windows user, I could use Windows Character Map, but the grid of letters is teeny-tiny and hard to see.)  I’ve clicked on the alternate A that I want, and then I’ve used the Ctrl+C shortcut to copy it.

And here I’ve pasted that A into my artboard in Cricut Design Space.  I had the same SAMPLE text in here twice; on the right side, I highlighted the original A, and then used the Ctrl+V shortcut to paste in my alternate letter in its place.

From here, you can move forward with the “Ungroup to Letters” and “Attach” steps as outlined above so that your text is ready to send to your machine.

How to Use SVG or Other Alphabet Sets

Some fonts will include a vector file containing the character set of the font, all in a true single stroke format.  If the font includes that, here’s how to use it. (The most recent ZIP for our example font, Spicy Sketcher, includes this type of file.)

After creating a new project, click the Upload button at the bottom of the left side menu.

Click on “Upload Image” to bring in the SVG alphabet file.

You can either drag and drop the SVG file in, or you can browse for it on your computer.  I’m going to browse.

Once you’ve found the SVG file, click on it and then click on “Open”.

The file will now load into Cricut Design Space. (You may get a yellow note across the top of the screen along the lines of “Wow, that’s a large file, it’s taking a moment.” Just let it do its thing.)

Once it’s loaded in, click on “Continue” in the lower right corner.

You’ll get one more screen that gives you the opportunity to rename the file, and add tags so that you can find it more easily in your uploads. Do those things if you want to, then click on the “Upload” button in the lower right corner.

The SVG will be inserted into your project artboard as one big grouped unit.  To ungroup the letters so that they’re easier to work with, you can either ungroup with the Ungroup button on the right side menu …

Or you can select the file and right-click, and then choose “Ungroup” from the pop-up menu. Or if you’re a shortcut fan, you can select the file and use the Ctrl+Shift+G shortcut (probably Cmd+Shift+G on a Mac) to ungroup all of the letters.

Now you can pull individual letters over to the side and arrange them however you like. Resize, rotate, align, whatever rocks your socks.

Once you’re done with the rest of the alphabet, you can just drag a rectangle around all of those unused letters and hit your Delete key to remove them from the artboard.

And then, just like with the typed font version, select all of the elements of your design and click on “Attach” so that when you send them to Make, they stay where you want them.

Click Make, and you’re good to go!  Select your machine and material, make any adjustments here, and then you can Continue to the drawing process.

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!