
An Exploration of Variable Fonts (2018) - rememberlenny
https://blog.prototypr.io/an-exploration-of-variable-fonts-37f85a91a048
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mark-r
This looks like the poster child of a solution looking for a problem. It's all
based on Adobe's development of Multiple Master fonts in the 1990s, and if it
hasn't taken off in that amount of time I doubt it ever will.

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rememberlenny
I don’t think it’s fair to attribute your reasoning here.

The use of web fonts has never been greater. With more websites using non-
system fonts, Variable Fonts serves to reduce page weight while providing a
technical and design solution.

If a website uses more than two weights from a given font, then a Variable
font would save bytes downloaded. The desire to optimize websites is not going
away soon, so this will continue to be valuable.

The unnecessary design restrictions around “number of font weights” that many
web developers are used to would be blown away by well designed Variable
Fonts. Too often web developers are tasked with limiting a designer from using
more than two fonts or choosing between a limited number of font weights.

A single font file can replace multiple fonts by utilizing the expanded design
space.

Additionally, when considering non-Latin fonts, there a huge implications of
using custom fonts. Font weight improvements there are in the megabytes.

Beyond the utility of font size, Variable Fonts present the concept of
controlling text within a multi-dimensional design-space, rather than a pre-
designated font instance. This caters new opportunities to improve readability
on various display sizes.

With the growing number of contexts where people consume text (small and big
screens/AR/VR/IOT) the added control provides new creative opportunity and
routes for accessibility.

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mark-r
While a variable font does reduce the byte count when using more than 2
weights, the biggest savings come from downloading a single file rather than
multiple with all the round-trip delays involved. That could have been
accomplished much easier.

The biggest holdup on variable fonts is that they're simply a lot harder to
design than regular fonts. The lack of usable examples will hold back the
technology more than anything else.

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rememberlenny
When considering that 80% or even more usage is likely a small set of fonts,
you can imagine how the migration of a few fonts can be seen to make a huge
impact to the web.

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taneq
Maybe 'variable fonts' is standard nomenclature in publishing circles but I
would have expected something like this to be called 'parametric fonts' or
similar.

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jimhefferon
I'd expect something like "Metafont." :-)

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gjm11
Yeah, it's a bit strange seeing this described as if it's a new thing.

1982: Knuth's paper "The concept of a meta-font" is published.

1991: Adobe's "Multiple Master" fonts are introduced.

1994: Apple's TrueType GX is introduced. (Later "Apple Advanced Typography".)

2016: OpenType "variable fonts".

Maybe "variable fonts" are better than their predecessors? It's hard to tell.
But it's strange for the predecessors not to be acknowledged at all.

Much more information about OpenType's "variable fonts" can be found at
[https://medium.com/variable-fonts/https-medium-com-tiro-
intr...](https://medium.com/variable-fonts/https-medium-com-tiro-introducing-
opentype-variable-fonts-12ba6cd2369) \-- discussed on HN at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12501665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12501665)
. (That article does mention TrueType GX and Adobe multiple masters, but not
Metafont.)

~~~
mark-r
Did Knuth touch on the ability to morph between different designs of a font,
or was it simply the ability to do fonts as sets of curves so that they could
be resized?

Edit: never mind, I looked up the original paper and find a good description
in just the first paragraph. He definitely had variations of the letters in
mind.

