Tutorial: Using Glyphs in Illustrator & InDesign

I've had a few people ask about the glyphs I used in the SupaFly.Designs logo, so I thought I'd post a little tutorial on how to use them.

First off, glyphs are special characters, symbols and pictographs found in typefaces. A lot of typefaces have glyphs that go way beyond the keys you see on your keyboard. If you don't know how or where to locate and use glyphs, you're missing out on tons of characters that can enhance your designs typographically.

Below you'll see three screenshots showing how to locate and use glyphs in Illustrator CS3. To access the glyphs palette in Illustrator CS3 go to Window > Type > Glyphs. You should be able to access glyphs the same way in both Illustrator and InDesign (that applies from at least CS up through CS3 also).

IMAGE 1
In this image I used Bickham Script Pro as my example typeface. You'll see the standard lowercase g on the left and then highlighted on the right is one of the 11 glyph options for the same letter.

IMAGE 2
In this image I used Adobe Garamond Pro Italic as my example typeface. You'll see the standard uppercase a on the left and then then highlighted on the right is another glyph option for the uppercase a.

IMAGE 3
This image shows how to view all the glyph options for the Adobe Garamond Pro typeface. You can view the glyph options for the "Entire Font" or you can select an individual letter and only view the options for that character (see the first image for an example). You can also view any "Ornaments" the typeface may have.

For more info on using glyphs in Illustrator CS3 check out this link.