Illustrator and Photoshop are not enough. You need a font editing tool, such as FontLab Studio, FontForge, Fontographer, TypeTool, or Glyphs. They range in price from open source (free) to $600+. They allow you to turn a "set of alphabetic characters" into a font, and help with creating those glyphs.

But having the software isn't the same as knowing what to do with it, any more than having Photoshop makes you a photographer. Your question is kind of like saying you can't find a good piece of music to have playing at your wedding reception, so how do you go about creating a symphony? Or you don't like the chair you've been sitting in, so how do you create a replacement? It's not that these things are impossible to learn, but the relevant skills are a substantial investment of time and energy.

My serious answer would be study on your own for a year or so, and apply to the appropriate Master's degree program at the University of Reading (UK), or the Royal Academy in the Hague. Or the new program just starting up in Buenos Aires.

Cheers,

T

With due respect to Herb, often logos are a combination of a regular typeface and a graphic design. Sometimes the typeface is modified, sometimes not. Even among his three examples, Adobe's logo uses Myriad, McDonald's golden arches are a graphic, but used to be accompanied by the word "McDonald's" in Helvetica (if I recall correctly), and Although the Coca-Cola logotype is custom, for Diet Coke I believe the word "Coke" is set in a normal typeface (Times, IIRC).

That being said, completely custom lettering and modified (even heavily modified) font usage are both quite common for logos as well.

Cheers,

T

Tai Lao said:

"To put it another way, and with all respect, anyone who needs to post

the question is at least years away from acquiring the necessary skills

to create a font."

That's a bit harsh. While it might be true if the desired end result is

a quality text font, there are simple and inexpensive - even free - ways

to produce functioning fonts - particularly if they're for a limited

purpose.

These include various services that produce a font from your handwriting

(you don't HAVE to submit your pigeon-scratches, you CAN submit nicely

drawn images of letters or even clipart). There's also the free on-line

Fontstruct.com.

No, you won't produce a multi-language multi-weight artistically

superior, coordinated font family, but you WILL get something, and some

of the results, particularly for display fonts, can be quite striking.

   - Herb