We’re excited to see a recent development by Portland based TK Type, which has made creating infographics simpler for both print and the web. TK Type have developed a downloadable font named “Chartwell Type”, which allows the user to create pie charts, bar graphs and spark lines very easily through OpenType to interpret and visualise the numbers and values inside web code, making it easy to edit and update.
Pie Charts:
Chartwell Bars:
Chartwell Lines:
Each element fetches $20 on the TK Type site, or $50 for all three. It comes with a supporting webfont and a javascript plugin ” to do the heavy lifting” they say, until there is better support.
The system is particularly suited to software programs such as Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop because they have their own text engines, compared to programs such as TextEdit, Omnigraffle and iWork which are not compatible because they work on a MAC based text engine. It also does not agree with Microsoft Office or Excel, so pretty much stick to the Adobe environment if you plan to give it a try.
A fantastic, simple (yet slightly expensive) tool for making infographics more accessible to everyone.