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Variable Fonts

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Re: Variable Fonts

#3
I think variable fonts are really neat—but I'm curious to know what professional typographers think about them. Take Concourse [1] by Matthew Butterick for example—if you click on the "PDF" link at the top, you'll get a PDF sample of the Concourse font, and on page 7 Butterick talks about how the font has been carefully duplexed so that different weights always take up the same amount of space. With a variable-width font, presumably you'd be able to adjust the tracking as well as the weight to make them match, but maybe not? And maybe not automatically? I dunno.

Do any professional typographers have opinions on the pros/cons of variable fonts?

[1]: https://mbtype.com/fonts/concourse/sample.html

Re: Variable Fonts

#4
Wow, what a cool resource. There are some beautiful fonts in here.

I dutifully clicked "Load 30 more" 12 times to see them all, but it'd be really helpful to be able to search and filter, and maybe "Load all".

Re: Variable Fonts

#5
I wasted two days recently trying to make a variable font using free software. The only ressource I found is a youtube video telling me to use a python script from a google drive.

It didn't work despite many many tries. I have two woffs of the same font that I bought and I wanna make a variable woff2 with only these two variants.

I couldn't believe that there isn't a clear way to do this.

Here's the youtube video: https://youtu.be/xoQuWARCUWI

Re: Variable Fonts

#6

I think variable fonts are really neat—but I'm curious to know what professional typographers think about them. Take Concourse [1] by Matthew Butterick for example—if you click on the "PDF" link at the top, you'll get a PDF sample of the Concourse font, and on page 7 Butterick talks about how the font has been carefully duplexed so that different weights always take up the same amount of space. With a variable-width…

Take a look at the GRAD parameter under Roboto Flex on the post's page—it seems to do what you're talking about.

Re: Variable Fonts

#7
i prefer calling this concept by its original name, "metafont", in part because "variable font" is sometimes used as lazy shorthand for "variable-pitch font", i.e. proportional rather than fixed-pitch like a typewriter. on the other hand, "metafont" is also the name of a particular piece of free software for this purpose

Re: Variable Fonts

#8

I wasted two days recently trying to make a variable font using free software. The only ressource I found is a youtube video telling me to use a python script from a google drive. It didn't work despite many many tries. I have two woffs of the same font that I bought and I wanna make a variable woff2 with only these two variants. I couldn't believe that there isn't a clear way to do this. Here's the youtube video: ht…

there is a well-known piece of free software for this called "metafont" (also the original name for the concept here being neologized "variable font"—a "metafont" is an infinite set of fonts produced by an algorithm from input variables) but it doesn't have a gui and can't import woff or truetype

Re: Variable Fonts

#10

I think variable fonts are really neat—but I'm curious to know what professional typographers think about them. Take Concourse [1] by Matthew Butterick for example—if you click on the "PDF" link at the top, you'll get a PDF sample of the Concourse font, and on page 7 Butterick talks about how the font has been carefully duplexed so that different weights always take up the same amount of space. With a variable-width…

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