Old Standard is supposed to reproduce the actual printing style of the early 20th century, reviving a specific type of Modern (classicist) style of serif typefaces, very commonly used in various editions of the late 19th and early 20th century, but almost completely abandoned later.

It supports typesetting of Old and Middle English, Old Icelandic, Cyrillic (with historical characters, extensions for Old Slavonic and localised forms), Gothic transliterations, critical editions of Classical Greek and Latin, and many more.

Old Standard works with TeX engines that directly support OpenType features, such as XeTeX and LuaTeX.