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amaarora
Inspiring
November 28, 2018
Question

[Updated] Usefulness for below types of fancy fonts and hybrid glyphs.

  • November 28, 2018
  • 13 replies
  • 1799 views

-Updating the description

Some key aspects:

1. Glyphs can be partitioned into any number of segments

2. There is no convert to outline. Text remains live and editable

3. User can control the thickness of the bold and slant angle of the italics.. something like variable fonts

Hi Everyone,

We wanted to know if there is any usefulness to generate custom fonts whose glyphs are a combination of bold and italic typeface. We call these glyphs “Hybrid Glyphs”. So, to say, each glyph is segmented into regions and each region may have a different typeface replicated.

In terms of workflow, the user selects the font, say regular, and defines the segment marks in terms of how low it is from the font ascender line. Let say he marks two points at 20% and 50% above from the fonts descender (total font height=ascender-descender). This will generate three segments. For each segment he then may choose a different typeface to be replicated. For example, he may choose Bold-Italic-Bold. This will even be possible if the designer does not have the bold and italic typefaces of the font. In such cases, it will replicate a false bold in the first segment, a false italic in the middle segment and a false bold in the third segment. In case the user has the required typefaces of the font family, then that portion of the glyph will be taken from the corresponding font. The user may choose any typeface like semi-bold, semi-italic, condensed etc

We primarily want to know...

  1. Will this "feature" be useful to designers?
  2. How often will you use this capability?
  3. Under which scenarios and product will this most likely be useful? (maybe for Logos in AI? and titles in InDesign?)
  4. Do you see any missing aspects to this which can increase its usage?
  5. In light of the latest typography advancements (SVG fonts, variable fonts) how do you place this capability?

PS: This is not something we are implementing in any product for now. We just want your opinions and feedbacks.

-Aman

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    13 replies

    Ton Frederiks
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    November 28, 2018

    It may be very occasionally useful.

    If we were able to stack additional fonts in the Appearance panel and to add masks to them, this effect could be achieved and the ability to add masks in the Appearance panel could be useful for other objects too.

    PECourtejoie
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    November 28, 2018

    Yes, I'd vote for masks in Appearance, rather than this idea that might give shivers to Typographers and Type Creators ;-)

    Doug A Roberts
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    November 28, 2018

    It might be useful to someone, but I've never come across a scenario where I'd want this.If I ever wanted to achieve this absurdly niche effect, I could do it manually.

    PECourtejoie
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    November 28, 2018

    1.Will this "feature" be useful to designers?

    I don't know, was there demand for such things?

    2.How often will you use this capability?

    Given the number of fonts, I doubt.

    3.Under which scenarios and product will this most likely be useful? (maybe for Logos in AI? and titles in InDesign?)

    Custom titles, but still

    4.Do you see any missing aspects to this which can increase its usage?

    It could be useful to be able to determine other axis: left-right, corners...

    5.In light of the latest typography advancements (SVG fonts, variable fonts) how do you place this capability?

    Very low, I'd prefer Adobe to work on trying to help standards, like variable fonts integration, common interfaces etc.