Some came with just a singular option that changed only one character. Through these specimen pages, I learned that not all fonts were made equal. And, in time, online type specimen pages replaced PDFs as the method for communicating them (here’s an example from a font I like a lot, although I cannot quite explain why). Over the next few years, I made sure to open every PDF that came with a font, and inspect all the OpenType secrets hiding inside.Īs time passed, more and more fonts came equipped with special seasoning options. This was, as far as I can remember, my first public declaration of love for typography - and OpenType features were what led me there. To top it all, I added an extra section to my thesis titled “A note on typography.” Even there, I set the first two words in small caps, and wrote out the year in old-style digits.īut clumsy as it all was, it also felt profound: I wanted to share what I’d learned with the world. I added swashes to my chapter titles, peppered in a few different types of digits, and even snuck in an ornament or two. Predictably, I went overboard, applying the spices bluntly and indiscriminately. Why had no one told me about the existence of typographic paprika, coriander, cumin, and thyme? I’d been working with plain old salt and pepper, when Warnock Pro and other fonts had an endless number of more interesting seasonings. I was like a cook discovering the world’s spices for the first time. I discovered that a few other fonts also contained these features, and I filled my thesis to the brim with them. In the weeks to follow I became intoxicated with OpenType. It was no wonder I’d never stumbled upon them before. The swashes, the ornaments, the extra digits - I still didn’t quite understand what many of these were for, but I wanted to use them anyway.Īfter a little digging, there came another shock: Warnock Pro’s secrets were accessible in some design tools I was already using! The options were bundled under an obscure technical term called “OpenType features,” hidden inside submenus, filled with checkmarks attached to scary-sounding names. The list seemed endless, and I felt overwhelmed the typeface I thought I knew had so much more to offer than I’d realized. The first thing I noticed were new number styles, named “old-style figures” and “tabular figures.” These were digits of different shapes and positions, meant to blend better than Warnock Pro’s default digits when used within text, or inside tables: The options went beyond - far beyond - the standard bold and italic. The PDF explained Warnock Pro was more than it appeared: True connoisseurs of the font could move past its basic look and customize the character of its characters. I’d used it before and thought I knew it well, but that day I learned it had been living a mysterious double life. I explored the university’s directory of fonts, and dove into the PDF instruction manual of Warnock Pro, one of my favorites. So, I did what I often do when the creative side of my brain becomes restless: I turned to typography. I was working on my doctoral thesis, but things weren’t going very well. It happened many years ago, during one beautiful Amsterdam spring, in a small room at the Vrije Universiteit. I remember exactly when and where I was when I discovered fonts have secrets. The mysterious double life of Warnock Pro But if you’d prefer a deeper introduction to the world of OpenType, read on for the tale of one designer’s love affair with it. If you’re in a hurry, you can jump to the description of the new functionality in Figma. This will allow you to turn on additional ligatures, customize the style of digits, switch to alternative letterforms, and make use of adjustments available in many of today’s fonts - through a user interface that will make discovering them as much fun as using them. Starting today, Figma will support OpenType features of all the fonts you use: local fonts, Google Fonts, and fonts shared inside organizations.
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