Our desktop fonts come in the OpenType (.otf) format (with PostScript outlines if you wanna know it all). Our webfonts come in several formats. Our mobile fonts come in the TrueType format (.ttf).

Sure. Although they are not implemented in our webshop, we’ve got TrueType versions of all our fonts as well, which we can deliver by email after you’ve bought a license through our webshop. Just contact us by mail.

Sure. Every font comes with a certain amount of OpenType features. Which features are implemented depends on the design of the family, and varies throughout our library. Please have a look at the documentation of every font family itself to see which OpenType features are included.

OpenType is a font format that has some advantages to older formats it succeeded. OpenType has 3 important aspects:

• OpenType fonts are cross-platform [same file for Windows and OSX]

• OpenType fonts can contain large character sets [no need to have a separate font for Central European accents]

• OpenType fonts can contain Layout features [like automatic ligatures or alternate figure styles for example].

Before you freak out: Small Caps come as separate fonts by default, but in case you prefer to have Small Caps embedded as an OpenType-feature: just drop us an email and we'll send them. Now, take a breath, and relax. Indeed, by default we deliver Small Caps as separate fonts. Here’s why:

After a decade of experience with OpenType, our top-1 support question became: 'Hey, I bought your Pro font but you forgot to send me the small caps. Can you please send them?" After explaining the OpenType menu in applications like Photoshop and InDesign too often (“wow, never saw this”), we have to say that most users take a font with its OpenType features as it is. Default behaviour should be ‘good’, unfortunately too many people don't want to think about OpenType features at all, a font ‘should just work’.

Admitting that it would be handy to have small caps embedded in a font as OT-feature, apparently the interface requires too much knowledge for many average users. Due to the poor OpenType user interfaces of most current OpenType-savvy apps, the average designer doesn’t know the menu and its huge possibilities. Some other apps can’t even access the small caps feature at all. Which means only advanced users will notify or be able to use the small caps, also because it’s still not possible to inspect a typeface on the existence of small caps in a font management app for example. Even worse, not every style within a family always comes with small caps, but how do you figure that out? For some people it's really great if small caps are embedded in a font, the majority will unfortunately totally miss the presence of small caps. That’s a pity, also because we spend a tremendous amount of time in designing them. With other words: small caps are too important to leave them only for the experts, and therefore we deliver them as separate fonts. Now they are visible in the font menu. Everybody understands how that works.

In the end, build-in small caps are ideal. True. But only if the interface makes them easy to use for a large audience. We want those small cap styles to be used, and we want to create user-friendly products. With better interfaces in the future, this might change. But we are not there yet.

In case you prefer to swap the fonts you've bought to fonts with small caps embedded as an OpenType-features, just drop us a line and they will be send by mail.

A type designer can choose if he wants to apply one or more Layout Features to his font. So when a font supports OpenType Layout Features, it doesn’t automatically mean the font supports all possible features. There can be for example also only one feature, ‘Swash’ for example, or only ‘Ligatures’, but nothing else.

Geeh, which era are you from? Our fonts come in the .otf format, so you can install them on OSX as well as Windows. Just use 1 font file throughout your entire workflow. We did our best to flatten out cross-platform issues as much as possible, but there will always some crazy app developers out there who don’t make their Windows app the same way as their OSX app. We feel sorry for them, but our fonts are cross-platform as Ronald and Frank de Boer*. The question is not ‘are your fonts cross-platform compatible?’, but ‘is your app cross-platform compatible?’.

{Please note: Windows XP users need to use the .ttf versions (instead of the .otf versions which are offered by default in our webshop; just email us). Microsoft ends their support for XP in April 2014, so may the force be with them}.

There are issues displaying font families in the font menu of MS Word 2011 (v14+) on Mac. This is a known, reported issue of MS Word (and other Office 2011 apps for Mac). Microsoft has promised to fix this in their next major release of MS Office for the Mac. (Hopefully this comes soon) The font menu looks messed up for families which have more than the basic 4 style-linked faces. Bold and/or Italic fonts might not appear, because MSWord turns non-style-linked fonts into style-linked fonts. So a bold or italic style (wrongly) disappears from the font menu, and is only accessible through the [B]/[I] button. So in case you look for Auto Bold Italic 1: select Auto-Regular and click the [B] & [I] button. But Auto Bold Italic 2 needs to be selected straight from the font menu, and [B] & [I] buttons need to be unchecked. And euhm… switching platforms with Office apps can cause trouble on this issue, as those [B] & [I] buttons work differently on both platforms. To be clear: our fonts are according to the specs. This is a bug in the current version of Microsoft Office for Mac (2011), which Microsoft promised to solve in their next major release.

How old are you? Seriously. Unicode was once a big improvement in type technology, but is meanwhile as obvious as a sunrise in the morning. Asking if our fonts support Unicode is like asking if your mother gave birth to you. So yeah, all our fonts support Unicode.

Our fonts do not contain any style-linking. Which means that in applications which use the ‘Bold’ and ‘Italic’ buttons, you need to select every style through the font menu instead of clicking [B] and [I].

Unfortunately there isn't any consistency across different type foundries in using “Pro” or “Std” names, and what to expect from fonts using these names. A “Pro” font from one foundry, might support compeletly different languages and contain a different amount of OpenType features than a “Pro” font from another foundry. You need to read the documentation of every foundry (or every typeface) to understand what the “Pro” and “Std” extensions mean.

Since the complete Underware font library has been upgraded in April 2013, all Underware fonts are named Pro. They are named Pro because they have a large language support (200+ languages), contain multiple OpenType-features, better cross-platform compatibility and have a much better screen performance. Next to that, it’s handy to quickly distinguish these new fonts from their previous, inferior versions.

Contact support@underware.nl in case you experience a technical problem. You don’t have to pull a ticket in a complicated system, remember super-safe-passwords or anything like that. Just mail us and we’ll try to figure it out together. Easy.

However:

1) Make sure the fonts are correctly installed
Before you mail us, make sure you’re fonts are installed correctly. We extensively test our fonts in as many circumstances as possible. So there is very little change that there is a problem with the font software. You might actually experience a problem with a font management application. If so: install the fonts directly in your system ‘Fonts’ folder. And restart your computer. Likely your problem is solved now.

2) Send a proper report
In case you want to report a bug, please mention:
• the operating system
• the version number of the operating system
• the application(s) you’re experiencing the problem
• the version number of the application(s)
• the version number of the font software
• a list of the font styles you experience the problem with
• precise description of the problem your experiencing, and mention everything you’ve tried so far to solve the problem.

We know that technical problems can be frustrating, but try to put your emotions aside for a moment. And just mentioning that “the fonts don’t work on my computer” does not bring us any closer to a solution for your problem.

All* our fonts support over 200 Latin languages. 200? Yep, 213 to be precise. We call that the Underware Latin Plus character set. Those 213 supported languages allow you to reach an estimated 2.134.923.711 speakers worldwide. Hold on, here is a complete list:
(*The only exception is Liza Pro, as she is loaded to the max with glyphs and code. Liza still supports 195 Latin languages, covering all Western and Central European languages but also much more)

No. Although we have some fonts (like Bello) with a Cyrillic character set, these languages are not implemented in the fonts in our shop. If you are interested in Bello Cyrillic, or if you are interested in character set expansion of our fonts, just contact us.

Did you ever wonder how many parts your car is made of?

Easy. Quit all applications. Copy your fonts in the ‘Fonts’ folder in the User’s ‘Library’. Enjoy.

Just follow the instructions from Microsoft.

In case you’ve got a previous, older version of the same font installed before, you have to do the following before installing this new, updated version:

• Quit all applications (InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop/etc)
• Deactivate and delete the previous version
• Search for any files on your computer containing "AdobeFnt"
• Then delete those files which end with ".lst"*
• Install the new font
• Start up your application

*This is an Adobe cache thingie, which can cause trouble for Adobe programs when you have several versions of a font with the same name flying around. Delete these files first.

Of course it ain’t always easy to choose a typeface online, but we do our best to make it as comfortable as possible for you. There are a couple of options to help you out. First of all, every typeface has an online tester, which allows you to set your own custom text in any of our fonts, at your preferred size. That’s totally free. But if that ain’t sufficient, you can always buy a single style of a typeface, and upgrade later to a larger package if you want. Single fonts are cheap.

Sure, in certain cases qualified clients can sign the Testing License Agreement. You’ll receive the font files to evaluate the suitability of the typefaces for your project. No complicated technical extensions, plugins or whatsoever. Not even a limited character set. Just receive the real fonts in full regalia and install them on your computer. Handy while sketching a magazine design for example. Contact us if this applies your situation.

Font licensing options