Originally released in 1987, Charter incorporates three important features: compact set width to give economical copyfit; generous x-height to give readability at small point sizes; and sturdy open letterforms to give reliable reproduction at both typesetter and laser printer resolutions. The design brings a clarity and freshness to everyday documents, such as newsletters, textbooks, directories and technical manuals, where the reader’s concentration must not be interrupted by unfamiliar letterforms but where typographic dullness can itself impair comprehension. The Italic has cursive letterforms - so is instantly distinguishable, while being readable enough in its own right for continuous text.

The Charter BT Pro Pack features 6 fonts: roman, italic, bold, bold italic, black, and black italic. The fonts include characters originally developed for expert sets, such as ligatures, ornaments, old style figures, small caps, and superiors. The Pro Pack fonts support Western, Central European, and Eastern European languages.

OpenType fonts are a cross-platform font format. The same OpenType font can be installed on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Unix systems. Mac OS X and Windows 2000, XP, and Vista have built-in support for OpenType. OpenType fonts also work on Linux, Unix, and earlier versions of Windows, where they are recognized as TrueType fonts.

OpenType includes many more features than the standard TrueType and PostScript formats, including the ability to install the same font on different platforms, crucial for document portability. OpenType fonts boost productivity because graphic designers and business professionals do not have to wrestle with many different fonts. With OpenType, customers have larger character sets to work with and fewer font files to deal with.