How do I create a bold UIFont from a regular UIFont?

And if you are looking for the swift implementation:

let normalFont = UIFont(name: "FONT_NAME", size: CGFloat(20))!
let boldFont = UIFont(descriptor: normalFont.fontDescriptor.withSymbolicTraits(.traitBold)!, size: normalFont.pointSize)

Hope this helps! Cheers!

iOS 7 introduces a new UIFontDescriptor class, which makes it a lot easier:

UIFont *font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica Neue" size:12];
NSLog(@"plain font: %@", font.fontName); // “HelveticaNeue”

UIFont *boldFont = [UIFont fontWithDescriptor:[[font fontDescriptor] fontDescriptorWithSymbolicTraits:UIFontDescriptorTraitBold] size:font.pointSize];
NSLog(@"bold version: %@", boldFont.fontName); // “HelveticaNeue-Bold”

UIFont *italicFont = [UIFont fontWithDescriptor:[[font fontDescriptor] fontDescriptorWithSymbolicTraits:UIFontDescriptorTraitItalic] size:font.pointSize];
NSLog(@"italic version: %@", italicFont.fontName); // “HelveticaNeue-Italic”

UIFont *boldItalicFont = [UIFont fontWithDescriptor:[[font fontDescriptor] fontDescriptorWithSymbolicTraits:UIFontDescriptorTraitBold | UIFontDescriptorTraitItalic] size:font.pointSize];
NSLog(@"bold & italic version: %@", boldItalicFont.fontName); // “HelveticaNeue-BoldItalic”

For people who got here looking for a Cocoa (macOS) equivalent, UIFontDescriptor comes from NSFontDescriptor, available since 10.3.