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 endpoint of an open path.

Before you start: how decorations behave

Three 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 decoration attaches to one on-curve point on the host outline (the corner or the endpoint), and the donor's shape is then fitted and oriented to that point 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 align the cap to the direction of the open stroke at its endpoint.

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.

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: An ornamental Cap Decoration on an open path

Cap Decorations attach to the endpoint of an open path and act as the terminal cap. This pairs naturally with single-line (monoline / engraving) work, where strokes are open contours rather than closed shapes.

1. Draw your donor cap glyph — a flared terminal, a ball, or an ornamental flourish.
2. Open a glyph built from an open contour (a single-line stroke).
3. Select the endpoint of the open path — the last on-curve point at the tip of the stroke.
4. Choose Glyph → Path Decoration → Add Cap Component…, then pick your cap donor.
5. The cap is inserted as the terminal finish at that endpoint.

Note: Cap Decorations are specifically for the endpoints of open contours. On a closed contour there's no open endpoint to cap — use a Corner Decoration there instead.

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.

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 export into the font? Yes — they always decompose on export. Font formats have no representation for decorations, so the exporter bakes them into plain geometry automatically; the decorations themselves live only in the editor and project, never in the exported .ttf/.otf.

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 — where Cap Decorations on open contours really shine.
• Export Fonts Correctly — what happens to decorations (and everything else) when you generate the final font.