You'll need: FontCreator (Windows and macOS), a working font project (.fcp), and one or two small "donor" glyphs to use as decoration shapes.

A Path Decoration is a small designed sub-shape attached to a specific point on an outline. When the glyph is rendered, the decoration replaces the area around that point with your designed shape, while the rest of the path stays exactly as you drew it. It's the clean way to add reusable serifs and other repeating finishes — corners, notches, bevels, ink traps, ornamental cap/terminal shapes — without redrawing them by hand on every glyph in this font editor. FontCreator's Corner Decorations are its take on corner components (smart corners).

The magic is reuse. The shape of a decoration is defined by a separate donor glyph in the same font, and many points can reference the same donor. Edit the donor once, and every place it's used updates automatically. And it's all non-destructive — your original outline is preserved until you export.

This tutorial walks through two worked examples: a Corner Decoration that drops a notch into corner points, and a Cap Decoration that finishes the top of a stem terminal.

Before you start: how decorations behave

Four things are worth knowing up front.

• They're non-destructive. Inside the glyph editor, the .fcp project, and the .glyphs format, decorations are kept and applied non-destructively — your original outline is preserved as you authored it.
• They follow the point. Each decoration identifies its target point by a stable internal reference, not by a position number. If you move the point, renumber it through editing, or reorganise its on-curve neighbours, the decoration stays attached.
• They fit using anchors on the donor. A corner decoration attaches to one on-curve point on the host outline (the corner point); a cap decoration attaches to two adjacent on-curve nodes on the same path (typically the two nodes at a stem terminal). The donor's shape is then fitted and oriented to those points using anchors you place on the donor glyph. This is the same anchor-driven model Glyphs uses for corner and cap components.
• They always decompose on export. Font formats have no representation for decorations, so the exporter automatically bakes them into plain geometry. Decorations live only in the editor and project — never in the exported .ttf/.otf.

Anchors on the donor: how the fit works

The anchors are what tell FontCreator how to land the donor shape on the host point:

• Corner donors use three anchors: origin (where the shape pins to the corner point), left (the instroke / entry side), and right (the outstroke / exit side). FontCreator aligns the shape so its left edge meets the incoming segment and its right edge meets the outgoing one.
• Cap donors use two anchors: node1 and node2, which pin the cap to the two adjacent stem nodes it sits between. Together those two anchors control both position and scale — with Fit on (see The Fit option below) the cap stretches to match the distance between them, i.e. the stem width.
• Alternatively, a cap donor can carry a single origin anchor marking where the first of the two stem nodes sits — a simpler setup for a fixed cap that doesn't need to scale to the stem width. Use node1 / node2 when you want the cap to fit stems of varying widths, and origin-only when the cap should always render at its design size.

In short: use node1 and node2 for a fitted or scalable cap; use a single origin anchor for a fixed-size cap without scale control.

Place these anchors on the donor glyph the same way you'd place any anchor. If a donor declares none, FontCreator falls back to a plain placement — but anchors are what give corners and caps their clean, predictable fit.

Note: Both kinds need a donor glyph that already exists in the same font. Draw your donor shape (the notch, the cap), add its anchors, and save it as its own glyph first.

Corner or cap? Two nodes vs one node

Path decorations come in two kinds, and the shape's footprint decides which to use:

• Corner (_corner.*) — attaches to one node. Use it for serifs, spurs and ink traps at a single corner. The bracket keeps its designed shape; if the stem gets wider, the flat between the two serifs absorbs the difference.
• Cap (_cap.*) — attaches to two adjacent nodes on the same path. Use it when the terminal is a single shape spanning the whole stroke end: flag serifs, pen in-/out-strokes (as on n, m, i), or the top of a lowercase ascender.

Rule of thumb: two nodes → cap (fits the stem width); one node → corner, or an origin-only cap when you want a fixed-size finish. If the foot of the stem has a flat part between the two serifs, always use two corners — a cap would bridge and stretch across that flat.

Side-by-side reference:

The reason it matters: a corner only reshapes the two segments leaving its one node, so the bracket keeps its designed shape and any change in stem width is absorbed by the flat between the two serifs. A cap owns the whole segment between its two nodes; with Fit on it scales to the distance between them (the stroke width), which is exactly why a flat-footed stem wants corners — corners keep the brackets constant while the flat absorbs the width. This matters even more in variable fonts, where stem width changes across masters.

Example 1: Reusable serifs with a Corner Decoration

Corner Decorations attach to a corner point and give it a custom finish — a notch, bevel, chamfer, ink trap, serif, or ornament — without hand-editing the corner.

1. Draw your donor glyph. Make a small notch or serif shape in its own glyph slot. Keep it modest in size relative to the corners it will sit on.
2. Open the glyph you want to decorate in the glyph editor.
3. Select the corner point you want to finish. Click a single on-curve point so just that one node is highlighted.
4. Choose Glyph → Path Decoration → Add Corner Component…, then pick your notch donor from the list.
5. The decoration is inserted around the corner. The corner now shows your designed finish while the rest of the outline is untouched.

To apply the same finish to other corners, repeat step 3–4 on each corner point and pick the same donor. Because they all reference one donor glyph, tweaking the donor later reshapes every corner at once.

Tip: Want a deeper or shallower notch everywhere? Don't touch the decorated glyphs — open the donor glyph and edit it once.

Watch out: If the decoration appears flipped or pushed the wrong way, the contour's direction is usually the culprit. Corners orient relative to the path direction, so a reversed contour reflects the finish — and a mirror (negative) scale swaps the entry/exit (left/right) anchors. Check the contour direction first if a corner looks flipped.

Example 2: A stem-terminal Cap Decoration

Cap Decorations sit between the two adjacent nodes at a stem terminal and finish the whole stroke end as one shape — a flag serif, a pen in-/out-stroke on n, m or i, or the top terminal of a lowercase ascender. Because the cap spans between two nodes, it also has the option to scale to the stem width as you adjust weight (see The Fit option below).

1. Draw your donor cap glyph — a flared terminal, a flag, or an ornamental in-stroke — and place node1 and node2 anchors on it, one for each stem node.
2. Open the glyph you want to decorate in the glyph editor.
3. Select the two adjacent on-curve nodes at the stem terminal that the cap should span.
4. Choose Glyph → Path Decoration → Add Cap Component…, then pick your cap donor from the list.
5. The cap replaces the terminal — its position is set by the two nodes, and (with Fit on) its width scales to the distance between them.

Note: A cap needs two adjacent on-curve nodes on the same path — you can't cap across a break, and you can't cap a single-node corner (use a Corner Decoration for that).

Tip: If the stem has a small flat between two serifs at the terminal, don't reach for a cap — a cap would bridge and stretch across that flat. Use two Corner Decorations, one on each serif corner. See Corner or cap? above.

The Fit option

With a cap selected, the Fit checkbox in the path-decoration panel controls whether the cap scales to the stem width.

• Fit ON — the cap scales to the distance between node1 and node2 (the stem width). Use this when the terminal should always span the full stem, at any weight — the natural default for flag serifs, pen entry/exit strokes, and most variable-font work.
• Fit OFF — the cap renders at its design size, positioned and rotated to the two nodes but not stretched. Use this when the cap is a fixed ornament whose size should stay constant regardless of the stem it sits on.

The Fit checkbox is available on both Windows and macOS — it's a normal path-decoration control, not a platform-specific one.

Watch out — Fit defaults to off. New caps arrive with Fit off, so a cap you'd expect to scale with the stem will render at design size until you tick Fit. If a cap looks the same width no matter how you change the stem, that's the first thing to check.

Baking decorations manually (rarely needed)

The exporter decomposes decorations for you, so you almost never have to do this by hand. When you do — say, to hand a simplified glyph to a tool that doesn't understand decorations — use Glyph → Decompose → Path Decorations. This permanently applies every decoration on the active layer to the authored outline, then removes the references, leaving plain geometry.

Watch out: Decompose is permanent within the project. Once baked, the decoration is no longer linked to its donor, so future donor edits won't reach it. Keep a backup if you might want to keep editing donor-driven.

Troubleshooting

Frequently asked questions

What are corner components / smart corners? They're reusable corner finishes attached to outline points. In FontCreator, Corner Decorations are its take on corner components (smart corners): a single donor glyph defines the corner shape, and every point that references it updates when you edit the donor.

Corner or cap — how do I decide? Look at the footprint. If the finish sits on a single corner point (a serif, a spur, an ink trap), use a Corner Decoration. If the finish spans the whole stroke end as one shape (a flag serif, a pen in-/out-stroke, an ascender terminal), use a Cap Decoration between the two stem nodes. Rule of thumb: one node → corner, two nodes → cap. And if the stem foot has a flat between two serifs, that's two corners — never one cap.

Does the cap scale with the stem? Only if the cap has node1 / node2 anchors and Fit is on. With Fit on, the cap stretches to the distance between its two nodes, so it always spans the current stem width — essential for variable fonts. With Fit off, or on a cap donor that uses a single origin anchor instead, the cap renders at its design size regardless of stem width. Fit defaults to off for new caps.

How do I add reusable serifs? Draw your serif shape once as a donor glyph, select the corner point you want to finish, then choose Glyph → Path Decoration → Add Corner Component… and pick that donor. Repeat on other corners with the same donor, so editing the donor later reshapes every serif at once.

Do path decorations remain editable in exported fonts? No. Font formats have no representation for path decorations. FontCreator automatically decomposes them into normal outlines on export, so the resulting shape exports, but the live decoration reference remains only in the FontCreator project.

What to read next

• Smart Components: Reuse One Shape in Many Glyphs — the donor-once, use-everywhere idea applied to whole component shapes.
• Single-Line Fonts for Engraving and Cutting — how decorations pair with open-contour, single-stroke work.
• Export Fonts Correctly — what happens to decorations (and everything else) when you generate the final font.