In 1968, American Type Founders produced OCR-A, one of the first optical character recognition typefaces to meet the criteria set by the U.S. Bureau of Standards. The design is simple so that it can be read by a machine, but it is slightly more difficult for the human eye to read. OCR-A follows the 1981 standard set by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), X-3.17-1981 (size I). The same design is also specified for the German DIN 66008 standard. OCR-B was designed in 1968 by Adrian Frutiger for Monotype. This design pushes the limits of the optical reader, but is easier for people to read. OCR-B’s construction follows the ISO 1073/II-1976 (E) standard, with 1979 corrections (letterpress design, size I). Both OCR-A and OCR-B have “alternate” versions, which have the standard ISO-Adobe character set instead of the more limited OCR character set.
The Adobe Originals program started in 1989 as an in-house type foundry at Adobe, brought together to create original typefaces of exemplary design quality, technical fidelity, and aesthetic longevity.
Today the Type team’s mission is to make sophisticated and even experimental typefaces that explore the possibilities of design and technology. Typefaces released as Adobe Originals are the result of years of work and study, regarded as industry standards for the ambition and quality of their development.
As with everything from Adobe Fonts, you can use these fonts for:
Design Projects
Create images or vector artwork, including logos
Website Publishing
Create a Web Project to add any font from our service to your website
PDFs
Embed fonts in PDFs for viewing and printing
Video and Broadcast
Use fonts to create in-house or commercial video content
How to Use
You may encounter slight variations in the name of this font, depending on where you use it. Here’s what to look for.
Desktop
In application font menus, this font will display:
{{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.preferred_family_name}} {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.preferred_subfamily_name}}Web
To use this font on your website, use the following CSS:
font-family: {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.family.css_font_stack.replace('"', '').replace('",', ', ')}};
font-style: italicnormal;
font-weight: {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.font.web.weight}};
Glyph Support & Stylistic Filters
Fonts in the Adobe Fonts library include support for many different languages, OpenType features, and typographic styles.