TypeTalk: Stylin' Sets

Ilene Strizver

TypeTalk is a regular blog on typography. Post your questions and comments by clicking on the Comments icon above. If Ilene answers your question in the blog, you’ll receive one Official Creativepro.com T-Shirt!
Q. What are Stylistic Sets?
A. Stylistic Sets are groupings of alternate characters available in some OpenType fonts. The groupings can be based on any criterion selected by the typeface designer: design, language, and so on. For example, a type designer might combine a selection of Swashes, Contextual Alternates, and Discretionary Ligatures in one Stylistic Set.
In InDesign, Stylistic Sets are off of the OpenType flyout menu (Figure 1) and are numbered 1 through 20. Sets that aren’t available for your particular font appear in brackets. To see characters in available Sets, click the drop-down menu of the Glyphs palette (Type > Glyphs).
Figure 1. To reach Stylistic Sets in InDesign, click the Character panel’s flyout menu and navigate to OpenType > Stylistic Sets.

While QuarkXPress doesn’t recognize Stylistic Sets, you can access all the characters in sets using XPress’s Glyphs palette (Window > Glyphs).
You can use more than one Stylistic Set at the same time if you want to combine the characters. Note that Stylistic alternates aren’t the same as Stylistic Sets and aren’t necessarily accessible via Stylistic Set groupings.
Stylistic Sets are a relatively underused feature of OpenType, but they’re becoming more common, so be sure to look for them to make your work easier and more typographically interesting.
Figure 2. Trilon, Terminal Design’s soon-to-be-released type family, contains four Stylistic Sets.

Figure 3. The first three have an alternate g, a, and y, respectively, while the fourth set contains all three alternates.

Love type? Want to know more? Ilene Strizver conducts her acclaimed Gourmet Typography workshops internationally. For more information on attending one or bringing it to your company, organization, or school, go to her site, call The Type Studio at 203-227-5929, or email Ilene at [email protected]. Sign up for her e-newsletter at www.thetypestudio.com. You can also follow Ilene on Facebook and Twitter.