OpenType: the fusion of design and technology

By Computer Arts on July 10, 2008

OpenType technology has revolutionised the way designers work with type. Nick Cooke explains how to get maximum benefit from OpenType and enrich your creative output.

OpenType has become the new industry standard font format, offering countless new creative options to everyone working with type. Type designers have been freed from the shackles of PostScript's restrictive character set, enabling them to include alternates, small caps, swashes, ligatures and additional languages within one single feature-rich (Pro) font.

Furthermore, fonts can be 'programmed' to behave contextually, automatically inserting a stylistic alternate, ligature or end glyph into OT-savvy applications when the relevant feature is activated.

In this project we look at how advanced type features can be programmed in FontLab Studio using G-Type's Houschka Rounded font. We'll also focus on how to make OpenType Pro fonts work hard for you when designing layouts in InDesign CS3.

Click here to download the tutorial for free