By now, everyone is aware of OpenType and its two main benefits; cross-platform compatibility, and its ability to support widely expanded character sets and layout features. It’s the second one that we want to spotlight here, to show you the real power of the format. Additionally, it has come to our attention that
some designers might not know why in some releases it is worth the extra cost. A perfect example of this is the difference between Underware’s Liza Pro and Liza Standard releases.
If you compare the two prices (single weights) you will see that
Liza Std is $60, while
Liza Pro is $90. The fonts may appear to be identical at a glance, but in reality they are completely different. The differences lie in the details and the way they function. The power of Liza Pro comes from the mad chops that the Dutch gangsters at Underware put into its execution, allowing different combinations to behave in remarkably different ways–almost as if the font understands what you want before you do. The numbers tell the tale: Liza Std only has 387 glyphs, while Liza Pro has more than three times that, at 1,105 glyphs. If you need a standard, simple script font, than Liza Std will do you just fine. But if you want a dynamic script that is full of life and potential, Liza Pro is more than worth the few extra ducats. Watch the video above, and the difference quickly becomes apparent. You will notice Liza Pro (top) will “intelligently” change and adjust to the best visual flow of your letter combinations, whereas Liza Std, while still beautiful, is preset in its ways.
All of the OpenType features shown in the video above can be executed in any major graphic application like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.
We are extremely excited to announce the addition of URW++ to our font library. URW++ has been at the forefront of digital typography since the early 1970‘s. From design classics like Paul Renner’s Futura to Oswald Bruce Cooper’s Cooper, they have designed, published and digitized over 600 astonishing font families. We’re starting today by offering over 60 of those, and over the next few months we will be adding around 50 families a month. And here’s the best part: not only have URW++ brought us all these classics, but they are completely affordable.
One our most common customer service questions is ’how do I get the swash items to show up in Adobe Illustrator.’ Well, we suggest you read these tech notes from Adobe which will easily show you where and how to use these extra swash characters in fonts like Agostina. For more information on the OpenType format, check out Adobe’s OpenType Page. Each Adobe application handles OpenType a little different, so check the specific application help docs on how to view the opentype options, Adobe has all this clearly listed in the documentation.
For OpenType development and technical details, these links provide a wealth of information: Microsoft, Unicode.org , Gallery of Unicode and Fontlab.
Starting 2009 with a bang, we bring you Hannah!
Hannah is a font comprised of three versions that work together as one, producing not variation and contrast between weights but between widths. The loose, hand drawn quality adds yet another layer of personality to the font. Hannah is similar to one of our popular Hand Set fonts, ThinAire, but is available in OpenType format which makes Hannah much more versatile. There are also some additional unicase characters included in the font which can be activated as contextual alternates in OpenType.
Buy Today!
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Agostina is a unique typeface in many ways. The obvious being that is is a Sans-Serif typeface that contains both beginning caps and ending lowercase swash letters. This instantly gives endless typographic possibilities to the user. Agostina takes advantage of the OpenType font format that opens further exploration with a full latin and limited alternate characters as well. With almost 300 characters, Agostina is a workhorse and a must own typeface.
