FF Chartwell: a Graph-Making Font

13th May, 2012

FF Chartwell by Travis Kochel is an ingenious typeface which makes use of OpenType ligatures to create graphs within a text box...

The set of typefaces was added to the FontFont library last week and is now available in seven different graph styles - Chartwell Bars, Chartwell Bars Vertical, Chartwell Lines, Chartwell Pies, Chartwell Radar, Chartwell Rings and Chartwell Rose – examples of each graph style are shown below:

So how does it work? Using OpenType ligatures, strings of numbers are automatically transformed into charts. The data remains in a text box, allowing for easy updates and styling. It’s really easy to use once you've got the hang of it; you just type a simple series of numbers like: ‘10+13+37+40’, turn on Stylistic Alternates or Stylistic Set 1 and a graph is automatically created. To see the original data all you need to do is turn o Stylistic Set or Stylistic Alternates.

If this sounds a little mysterious, a FontShop technician has made a handy how-to-use-FF-Chartwell film and posted it on Vimeo:

Find out more about FF Chartwell at fontshop.com

Author: Gavin Lucas
Source: Creative Review