I thought I should mention that I and some other folks are teaching a series of font making workshops for beginners—folks with no (or little) previous experience in type design.
The next two are in Chicago (Mar 8–10) and Portland (Mar 15–17), but there will be more.
See http://craftingtype.com/ for details.
Also http://ilovetypography.com/2013/02/24/making-fonts-crafting-type-works hops/ for a long article about the workshops and the recent surge of interest in type design.
