This is a document written for people doing type design. It won't tell you anything about how to do type design itself (or, at least, not at a significant level), but it will explain what value things like git and GitHub can bring to a typeface project.
I think it matters to discuss these things in the specific context of a type-design project, because git and GitHub come from the world of programming -- and some pretty small niches within programming, for that matter -- which means that a lot of the generalized advice and "howto"-style material you find if you just search online is going to be focused on programming projects, with little to say that applies to design projects and a lot that doesn't apply. Hence the choice of titles: it's not "type design with git" because you're not using git to do type design. You're doing type design, and if git has something to help you get that done, great: let's see what that helpful stuff is.
I'm also serious about the "opinionated opinions" part: this is my perspective and I'm sure other people with experience would have different things to say. But I think it makes for a more useful document for one person to write it, intentionally, and to explain the "why"s -- rather than trying to encapsulate every possible different approach and viewpoint, which tends to result in a generic and noncommital list of ingredients. So I am trying to say why I believe some things are more important than other things: others may disagree, and you might disagree, too, but at least I'll say why, and hopefully that will connect the advice to the reasons and be more beneficial.
There are going to be four parts:
- An overview of what git and GitHub do and why they do it that way. That's important because you only need to care about the parts of these things that matter for your type-design project.
- A walkthrough of how you use git itself in a type-design workflow. That's important because all of the add-ons, GUIs, and web services (including GitHub) are secretly running standard git under the hood, so you'll be a lot better off using them once you know what they're hooked up into themselves.
- A walkthrough of how projects and repositories work on GitHub. That's useful because there are a lot of features and norms of GitHub that aren't really part of git and, here again, some of them matter for your type-design project and some don't.
- A walkthrough of the GUI app "GitHub Desktop" and some similar graphical tools. I think all of these tools I've seen have awkward UI and UX designs, so they are harder to get used to than they need to be, but yet again, the main goal is to point out how to find and use the parts of the programs that are valuable for your project.
(although, as I'm writing this, not all of those parts are done yet....)
I suggest that you start at the overview page, even if you think it isn't something you're interested in. Some of the overview stuff is going to get referred to in the other parts, just to not repeat things too many times.
I'm also adding some resources made by other people, so you can get additional perspectives and have some places to quickly go as you continue getting git and GitHub integrated into your processes.
It's also worth keeping in mind that I'm mainly writing this from the perspective of a type designer using a Mac, just because that's helpful to the most people. Not much of it is specific to Macs or to a particular font editor, but the examples and phrasing of terms leans that way for convenience.
So that's it. Happy reading; please get in touch with me if you find a typo or some other mistake, and please please even more get in touch with me if you have a question that isn't covered. This document exists solely to be helpful, so let me know how to make it ... more of that.
Nathan Willis n8willis