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Using a typeface is ABC-simple, the one may say (it’s kinda true). And though there are not so many pitfalls, involving an OTF in the workflow and using it in full may turn quite tricky.
The years of work in the graphic design industry have proven that there are far more difficulties with reaching the glyphs of an OTF than the one tells. And here I honestly hate the case when a creative finds an excellent typeface coming with finely showcased alternative characters, buys or downloads the font and that’s it! They just can’t detect these very characters and a beautiful story of using an OpenType font ends on the preview image.
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So, such scenario won’t help you come to a better design for the copy — yet you may try text effects, and they will make good effect (check how to use them in our tutorial).
The main and the most powerful feature of OTF fonts is the one of multilingual support, accompanied by fancy alternates for standard characters. It is essential for the languages which contain diacritics. Finnish, Czech, French, Polish, and many more are on the list.
Besides, it’s hard to do without alternates once the designer is pursuing the aim of adding charm and personality to the text. I guess it won’t be a discovery for you to learn what a huge impact they produce since you add them to a header, logotype, signature or anything. If you know where to click, of course.
Skipping these advantages is not our choice, so we’ve prepared a quick guide on how to install an OTF and reach all its glyphs — sure thing, in Photoshop and Illustrator.
The typeface we’ve used for the demonstration is Highlander Marker Script by Kavoon, which you can download free on Pixelbuddha. However, you can practice with any other OpenType font you like. And if you’ve got lost, let me know, I’ll be happy to give you a hand!