Colour Fonts
Information
PEP, the first colour font in the Colophon library, was released in 2019 as part of a collaboration with designer Dries Wiewauters.
Colour fonts are a relatively new technology, where additional data is embedded into the font file allowing for colour specification, including setting multiple colours within a single glyph.
Support for colour fonts has increased with the development of the industry standard OpenType-SVG format. However, it is still a relatively new format and there are certain limitations to the technology. The below list shows the current applications that support colour font technology:
Browsers suppporting Colour Fonts:
✓
Google Chrome (v. 71 and later)
Microsoft Edge (v. 38 and later)
Safari (v. 11 / High Sierra and later)
Firefox (v. 26 and later)
❌
Internet Explorer
Opera Mini
Applications suppporting Variable Fonts:
✓
Adobe Illustrator® (CC 2018 and later)
Adobe Indesign® (CC 2019 and later)
Adobe Photoshop® (CC 2017 and later)
QuarkXpress (Above 2018)
Pixelmator (macOS 10.14 Mojave and later)
Sketch (macOS 10.14 Mojave and later)
Affinity Designer (macOS 10.14 Mojave and later)
❌
Adobe After Effects®
Adobe Premiere Pro®
Figma
Adobe XD®
Adobe Illustrator® and Adobe InDesign®
You may encounter the following issues when using OpenType-SVG colour fonts in Illustrator or InDesign:
— Glyphs may appear in the wrong positions after export to PDF or SVG.
— When applying the Sheer, Rotate, or Reflect effects on colour SVG fonts, the effects
may be lost or the characters may move away from their original positions when the glyph outlines are created.
— When setting text vertically, the character positions may change once exported.
— Character placement may be incorrect when setting text on a spiral path placement.
The software teams are working on fixes to these issues.
(With credit to — colorfonts.wtf for references and information.)
