Last year there were about a dozen type foundries on the World Wide Web. Now there's over a hundred. The independent Internet type foundry looks like the '90s equivalent of the Mom and Pop video store of the '80s. One person can make five fonts, build a Web page, and boom! there's another fontographer in business.

With so many people starting their own "foundries," there's a lot of people out there wondering how they can do it themselves. I get a letter almost everyday from somebody saying "Chank, I've loved the alphabet my whole life and I've got a million ideas for fonts floating around in my head... I was wondering if you could tell me how you make your fonts, so that I could make some for myself."

Okay. Fine. I'll let the secret out.