Some OpenType sans with arbitrary fractions?
A friend of mine asked:
Off the tops of your heads, can you recommend a good OpenType sans serif text font that has a wide variety of fractions in it’s glyph sets, or allows InDesign to convert keyboarded fractions into “real” fractions?
I’m designing and typesetting a cookbook and need more fractions than just 1/2, 1/4, and 3/4. I selected Adobe’s Avenir initially, until I ran into this problem.
I don’t know sans serif fonts very well, but there is a lot of experience with this among the Typophile people. I would assume she prefers “real” (e.g., arbitrary) fractions rather than using one of those programs that simply scales down & repositions the lining numbers of a font.
Anybody got suggestions?
TIA,
Charles
18.Mar.2008 1.54pm
Hi Charles,
you can check: Adobe has icons that indicate if a certain OpenType feature (like fractions) is available in the font in question:
FontShop offers a customizable view of the character set:
Other foundries/distributors have different approaches; but most of them mention the (un)availability of OpenType features in some way on their website.
F
18.Mar.2008 2.41pm
National. See in the pdf specimen.
18.Mar.2008 2.45pm
Proxima Nova.
20.Mar.2008 3.43pm
All of our fonts contain arbitrary fractions.
For sans look at:
Tangent
ClearviewText
Giacomo 2.0
21.Mar.2008 6.14am
Besides Open Type, there are plenty of font sets that include expert collections which let you compose your own fractions, such as the FF Meta family or the Thesis fonts, or House Industries Neutraface. These fonts contain complete sets of numerators and denominators.
I come across this problem a lot, since I design primarily art books and cookbooks.
Alternately, you can create character style sheets for numerators (I usually make them 3 to 3.5 points smaller than the regular size shift them up 2 1/2 or 3 points. Sometimes I go up a weight if the family has enough subtlety) and denominators (also 3 points smaller but no baseline shift). Just remember to use the opt+shift+1 character for the slash.
21.Mar.2008 2.24pm
Thanks to all. I think this is a useful thread to continue if anyone wants, but the designer went with Mark’s Proxima Nova (she had to make a decision by the 19th).
21.Mar.2008 9.55pm
Mark is SO THE MAN today - btw this thread and the multiple plugs for Kinescope - good business!
22.Mar.2008 10.29am
Patty, as a tidbit, the designer did post this:
this article by Mark clinched the deal:
http://www.ms-studio.com/typecasting.html
22.Mar.2008 6.40pm
In their latest versions, the following Adobe OpenType sans serifs all support arbitrary fractions:
Myriad Pro
Cronos Pro
Hypatia Sans Pro
Cheers,
T
3.Apr.2008 11.02pm
Proxima Nova is so the font, and as Patty said creating style sheets is the move. Good habit.
*This occurs a lot with Helvetica Neue vs. the STD version. The baseline is about 2 points off as is the size, so initially you think it’s the fractions... ugh
4.Apr.2008 2.55pm
As far as I’m concerned, the only sane way is to have numerators, denominators and the fraction character all properly kerned, have the numerators also kerned with full-size numbers (oldstyle and lining) and a fractions feature set up. That way, the InDesign-tagged-text file can have a code around the fractions, and when that file is imported, everything is done.
Of course that doesn’t work if you don’t use OpenType.