Typophile

Font with two colours

agostini

Hi there
Not sure if this is the right place to ask my question, but here we go:

A client asked me if it is possible to have an icon-font, where they can define two colours of the icon in their layout program (Indesign). What they mean is that the icon (see attached) consists of two parts, where as one part needs to be a different colour to the other. In the attached example the background would be red and the cross will be white. I’m not a font designer and haven't used any of the font creation apps at all. I just wanted to know if it is possible or not? Maybe it is possible to define the background as the fill of the font and the cross as the stroke.

Thanks for your help.
Jörg

AttachmentSize
cross.png10.91 KB
Riccardo Sartori

No, they need to be two separate glyphs,* placed either on different text frames or using (negative) spacing.

* Various colour fonts standards are being developed, but support is still very limited.

agostini

Thanks Riccardo.

erwindenissen

Right now I agree with riccard0. Actually your question comes a little too early, as color extensions will become part of the OpenType font specification in the near future.

It will take some time before most software, InDesign included, start supporting the upcoming color font extensions.

Right now Internet Explorer running on Windows 8.1 and Firefox version 32 (on all platforms) already support the Microsoft color extension, as shown here:

http://www.high-logic.com/fontcreator/demo/monstre/index.html
http://www.high-logic.com/fontcreator/colorfonts/colorlogo.html

Martin Silvertant

That's pretty cool. What do you reckon this will be useful for though? I'm not protesting its usefulness; I'm just curious what it will lead to.

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