InDesigning.net

Have you ever considered how your numbers look in your table of contents, in your tables, or in your running text? Most modern typefaces (OpenType) contains different figures for different purposes - learn to master them to make a subtle but important facelift of your design.

The most obvious figures are the lining figures and the hanging (Oldstyle) figures - lining being where the figures "stands" on the baseline with equal height, and hanging being the figures positioned relatively to the baseline and x-height.

A table of contents using proportionally spaced hanging figures.

The spacing between the figures are really important, either you choose them to be tabularly or proportionally spaced. The default setting in most modern fonts are proportionally, since it is the pretties when the figures are written in context with other text - but as soon as the figures are placed as a part of a table with many numbers, or in this case a table of content, tabular is the way to go.

The same table of contents, but with tabularly lining figures instead.

Tabular figures are always the same width, so they as illustrated are placed right on top of each others, but not as beautifully spaced next to each others.

In many fonts, this width is equal to an EN, but since this is not always the case, you in InDesign have the Figure space available, so that you in a text with many numbers on top of each others, can use figure spaces instead of word spaces to match the exact width of the figure.

Using figure spaces to indent tabular figures. Also illustrated here, the slashed zero figure.

In the previous illustration you can also see another type of figure type available in many modern fonts, the slashed zeros.

There are several ways of discovering what types of figures are available in a specific font through OpenType:

1. Check the font specimen where this always is detailed - it is of course a selling point.
2. You can check the glyph palette for alternative figures (as with stylistic sets).
3. You can open the character panel (CMD+T/CTRL+T) and check the OpenType menu item - if an option is unavailable it will be surrounded by square brackets.

The character panel with the OpenType menu open.

For instance, turning on Fractions will make sure that numbers written like 1/100 will be using a real fraction slash, and real numerators and denominators, which separately also are available in the OpenType settings for text.

A fraction with real numerators and denominators.

Be sure to also read the earlier guides in the Better typography series: The right quotation marks, Using the baseline grid, Optical alignment and Creating and organising styles.

There are many reasons to start replacing your old font archive with OpenType alternatives. I mentioned one of the reasons earlier in the GREP style small caps post, and I will mention another reason today: Stylistic sets.

Normally, the different stylistic sets available for a font is mentioned in the font specimen. In this example I will use the font Hypatia Sans Pro, that shipped with the CS3 packages, and here is a link to the stylistic set descriptions.

Stylistic sets is used in OpenType to give you options of what you want the font to look like, offer you alternative letters etc. In Hypatia you have nothing less than 14 different stylistic sets to choose from, enabling you to decide whether you want serifs or not, alternative e's, J's, y's etc.

Another way to find out which stylistic sets you want to apply, instead of looking in the specimen, you can use InDesign's glyph palette. If you see field with a small arrow in the bottom right corner, it shows there are alternatives available for this letter. In this case I click and hold the "b"-glyph and I notice two alternatives – a small caps variant and a sans serif variant. Hovering the glyph a little you will notice a line containing "ss01 (ss01)". That line tells you how to achieve this look, by applying "stylistic set 01". In other cases the line could have looked like "Small Capitals (smcp) + ss10 (ss10)", which means you have to apply both small capitals and stylistic set 10.

Using InDesign's glyph palette to find stylistic sets.

You can also choose to see each individual stylistic set from the glyph palettes drop down menu, where you can see the entire contents of the set.

Using InDesign's glyph palette to see contents of a stylistic set.

How to apply the stylistic set

You find most of the OpenType related things in the OpenType Features section of of your paragraph style, other things like OpenType Superior/Superscript and OpenType All Small Caps are located in the Basic Character Formats section under Case and Position.

You can apply the stylistic sets in the OpenType Features section.

Specifically to apply a stylistic set, you want to look in the OpenType Features section where you can choose from a list of 20 possible stylistic sets. InDesign always shows 20 sets, even though the font used may feature none at all. As you notice, the selected drop down items are checked, which enables you to apply multiple stylistic sets.