Awesome OpenType examples?

Matt Heximer
Matt Heximer Posts: 17
in Education
Greetings Discerning Type Aficionados,

I am currently in the process of pulling together an informal visual presentation to casual type users about fonts, type design and untapped potential. I am wanting to highlight some of the impressive and unexpected things that type designers are doing with OpenType. The more great examples I can show, the better. I'm asking for your assistance to help me track down some of the better examples of what people are doing with OpenType programming beyond the typical glyph replacement (i.e. /f/ + /i/ = /fi ligature/). 
Things like complex FF Chartwell, the fun Sans Bullshit Sans, and Symbolset (word replacement with icons).

Please share your favourites and help me show the world the mind-bending things that Type Designers are doing.
(Thanks in advance for your help)

Comments

  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,195
    http://ilovetypography.com/2011/04/01/engaging-contextuality/
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,429
    Will you post this on youtube/speakerdeck? :D
  • Matt Heximer
    Matt Heximer Posts: 17
    edited May 2015
    @Nick%20Shinn - Thanks for the link. I remember running across that article a while ago while scouring the web looking for some OpenType help!

    @DaveCrossland - Ha! Depends on the final result! If I don't come across like too much of a bumbling idiot, then I'll throw something up online somewhere.
  • Alexis Luengas
    Alexis Luengas Posts: 36
    Cavatina is a font for musical notation I developed, whose functionality and formatting is based on (OpenType) contextual substitutions.
  • Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer
    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer Posts: 157
    Speaking of fonts for music, I think this one is pretty cool: http://manneschlaier.com

    And I have been putting games into OpenType features. Nothing online yet, but I will present some of it at TypeCon this year.
  • LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland
    LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland Posts: 723
    Already many years ago Erhard Kaiser designed a range of PDF’s displaying DTL typefaces, like this one for DTL Fleischmann. These were made with PS Type1 fonts and required manual positioning of all ligatures. It is perhaps not ‘beyond the typical glyph replacement’, but some work was needed for this back then.

    If you tell your audience that the substitution in the presentation was done via OT Layout features, everyone will instantly believe you, I reckon (as long as they don’t have access to the guts of the PDF).

  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,195
    edited May 2015
    I am expanding my ILT article into a talk at TypeCon—if you have done something interesting with <calt>, please let me know, and I will add it to the presentation.

    So yes, Dave, a video of this will be posted online.
  • Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer
    Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer Posts: 157
    I am expanding my ILT article into a talk at TypeCon—if you have done something interesting with <calt>, please let me know, and I will add it to the presentation.

    At Typecon, I’ll do a Type-in-Twenty about the games I mentioned above.

  • Charles Borges de Oliveira
    Charles Borges de Oliveira Posts: 71
    I am not sure if this falls into your topic. This is a video showing how to design a layout using alternates.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Rb6_qC5tk

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,149
    Microsoft's Gabriola font is now ten years old, but still performs some tricks that I've not seen elsewhere, e.g. ignoring base glyphs to contextually avoid repetition of ornaments.

Categories