Did you know...

...that you can access glyphs on your Mac without the use of Adobe Illustrator?  I didn't until last night!  I was just playing around with wording and fonts for our invites in Text Edit, when I stumbled across a function I'd never tried before!  (There may also be a way to do this on a PC, I'm just not aware of one).

So here's how it works:  Open up Text Edit and enter some text.  If you have a font on your computer that you know has glyphs included, use it.  For my example, I'm using Corsiva Hebrew.

Once you've typed the text you want to play with, choose Select All, then open the Font menu either in the top menu bar, or by typing Command/Apple + T.  In the font menu you will see an option button at the bottom of the window.

Click on the button and select "Typography..."  This will bring up the Typography menu.

Now have fun playing with all the different options!  Be sure to note that not all fonts will have the same options, if any at all, but many of the pre-installed fonts on my Mac had at least a few characters that I could alter, and there are tons out there available for download or purchase that have all kinds of kick-ass glyphs included!

And here is the finished product:

Voila!  The options are limitless!  Now I would like to apologize in advance for the dip in productivity this will undoubtedly cause once you start playing with every font available on your computer.  At least, that's what happened to me!

Hope this is useful!  Anybody who's more tech-savvy than me have other tips or tricks to share?