After more than 200 years of research, the topic of legibility still seems slippery when it comes to understanding the impact of typographic factors. The practical use of research papers for type designers sometimes seems unclear. Complex font variables like weight, width, or contrast are dealt with as if they were binary parameters instead of… Continue reading Font Ergonomics—A new experimental paradigm using AI
One of the early milestones within the Harfbuzz project’s Boring Expansion Spec is the specification of an “avar v2” table, which defines how axes can be composed from other axes. This takes Font Bureau’s Parametric Axes system and Underware’s HOI (Higher Order Interpolation for Variable Fonts) to the next level; Crossland and Penney will demonstrate… Continue reading Mom, You Sure Can Rehydrate a Pizza
The last 25 years have created what I think of as the fog of modern typography. Now the combination of existing technologies, and new Technologies are spreading a whole new level of quality, functionality and performance over the foggy old system. While not directly breaking from the old, the new technologies allow us to clear… Continue reading Confessions of a variator
The Font Bureau was commissioned by Google Fonts in 2016 with the purpose of showcasing what the new variable font technology could do with two new fonts: Decovar Alpha and Amstelvar Alpha. While the former showed how more than a dozen axes of stylistic variations can be used (and abused) for display typography, the latter… Continue reading Amstelvar and Roboto Flex: Unprecedented Flexibility in Text Typography
A common issue with multiscript typography arises when a graphic identity, originally designed with only Latin in mind, is later extended to cover other scripts—more often than not, the fonts lack the necessary characters. The problem becomes particularly acute on the web, where texts in scripts unforeseen by a site’s designers may need to be… Continue reading Parametric Fallback Fonts for the Web
Working on truly advanced and inclusive typography could not begin until variation technology was implemented five years ago. With the introduction of variable fonts, significant gains were made, from compression and animation to smoother weight, width, and optical size transitions. Many interesting font products have been introduced since the launch of variable fonts, but few… Continue reading Calibrating Type