One embodiment of a desktop publishing system including a typesetting software application, one or more families of layer fonts, and a layer font manager program. The layer font manager will automate the creation of copies of a text object selected within the typesetting application, and assign to those copies other fonts from the same layer font family as that of the original object. The layer font manager will additionally bind the original object together with the copies into a composite unit, keeping all copies precisely aligned. This embodiment will simplify the process of using layer fonts to set type with multiple-color characters.