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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1436922
Did you ever commission or design a company logo? Or maybe a small set of symbols, pictograms, or user interface icons — for a company, school, event or an app? Even if you just need one symbol, you usually end up with dozens or hundreds of files: PDF, EPS, SVG, PNG files, for light and dark backgrounds, monochrome and RGB and CMYK. Plus a “brand book”, a manual that is supposed to help users navigate through that labyrinth. Isn’t there a way to simplify all this? Have just one file that has my logo, plus perhaps all its variations and extra symbols, and such that it would work everywhere? There is such a way: it’s called a font. The OpenType .otf font format can store many symbols made of high-resolution vector graphics. These symbols used to be monochrome, and needed to be colorized in the app where you use the font. In newest versions of OpenType, you can mix vectors and bitmaps, colors and gradients — that’s how the colorful emoji are made! Let’s start simple: with a monochrome vector drawing of your logo. In a font editor like FontLab, create a new font and give it a name (Let's say MyLogoFont.) In the Font window pick a glyph cell that will contain your logo. We picked “one”, so the logo will appear when you type the digit 1. Open the EPS, PDF or SVG file of your logo in Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer and copy, then paste it into the glyph cell. Double-click the glyph cell to open your symbol (figure 1). Figure 1. You can copy/paste a vector graphic right into a glyph cell in a font editor.