Making an italic font is a bit harder. Italic is supposed to look as if it is handwritten. Its most significant characteristic is its angle, but it should also have some features of pen and ink drawing. That part takes significant time and effort.
However, if all you want is the angle, then things become much easier. FontLab has a “slant” action that you can apply to selected glyphs. Copy your regular font and then apply the slant action to all the glyphs of the copy. Adjust the sidebearings of the new font and now you have an “oblique” font ready to use. (Figure 3)
These are not the only font styles you can create. Condensed (narrow) and wide (expanded, not the same as bold) are also commonly used. (Figure 4) And of course you can combine styles to get variants such as bold-italic and condensed-oblique.
So don’t let your typography be held hostage to the lack of a style. It doesn’t take long to make them yourself.
Figure 3. Regular font converted to oblique font
Figure 4. Condensed variant
