Counterpunch in Practice: Designing Variable Fonts in the Browser

Experience the new Counterpunch font editor through a hands-on introduction to browser-based font design. Participants will learn how to create and edit glyphs, build variable fonts, preview OpenType features with real-time HarfBuzz shaping, and explore efficient workflows for both Latin and complex-script type design.

The workshop also introduces component editing, dynamic glyph filters, Python automation, and the AI assistant to streamline repetitive production tasks while keeping font data entirely on the user’s device.

Designed for type designers, students, and developers, this workshop demonstrates how modern web technologies can simplify font production, reduce technical overhead, and replace the traditional edit–compile–test cycle with an interactive, real-time workflow.

Yanone will also present the editor in a talk on Saturday.

Yanone, a German‑born artist, type designer, and software engineer, began coding at 13 on his father’s IBM 286. After releasing Windows GUI tools in the 1990s, he shifted to web design and left two semesters of computer science to study communications at Bauhaus University, Weimar, then Type and Media at KABK, The Hague. Internships at FontShop Berlin introduced him to font production and Python, leading to a thesis on a bilingual Arabic/Latin typeface for Amman. Later he designed FF  DIN Arabic in Jordan, where he met his wife, as well as his career’s most important typeface to date, Sukoon. Based in Berlin, Yanone works freelance as a font and software engineer and type designer.

YANONE