OT: Color Fonts

To be very clear, so-called “color fonts” are really OpenType fonts with SVG data for the glyph definitions as opposed to either Type 1 (i.e. OpenType CFF Bezier curves) or TrueType (i.e. OpenType TrueType quadratic curves). These fonts are required to have backup glyph definitions, either in OpenType CFF or OpenType TrueType format, for programs/systems that don't support OpenType SVG fonts.

Microsoft supports OpenType SVG beginning with Windows 8.1 and Office 2016. Apple and Google support is a bit sketchier, supporting bitmap SVG.

Adobe supports these OpenType SVG fonts fully in Photoshop and Illustrator and partially in InDesign (as noted above). The problem is that OpenType SVG is not and never will be directly supported in PostScript. Nor is it currently supported in PDF (including ISO 32000-2 PDF 2.0); such support may be added in the future.

When Illustrator and Photoshop output content formatted in OpenType SVG to PostScript or PDF, text formatted in these fonts is converted to vector/raster graphics per the font's definition (equivalent to “outlining text”). When InDesign currently outputs text formatted with these fonts, it currently uses the font as-is which results in PostScript and PDF using the fallback OpenType CFF or OpenType TrueType outlines, which obviously are monochrome (or colored in whatever single color is selected in the application). This will likely change in the future for InDesign. Since PDF doesn't directly support OpenType SVG, and PDF using such fonts will use the fallback OpenType CFF or OpenType TrueType monochrome font rendering.

At this point, one should be careful with use of these fonts for anything other than transient work.

          - Dov

I downloaded and installed about half a dozen of these. InDesign will let you set and view them, but it does not print them successfully in color. However, the same exercise in Illustrator allowed both applying the font and printing them successfully. I didn't try PS, but it says color fonts are supported there.

For a graphic designer, they are as useful as WordArt.

... The same can be true for non-graphic designers as well.