JoshB

+1 this is so frustrating! Very often I need to do microadjustments to my text where switching between Thin and ExtraLight just doesn't do - I need the steps between. Many of my fonts just don't work with Affinity. And while I am a huge fan of the software, this really is a big pain-point.

Hi!
Some Typefaces get updated over time and expanded as well. That's the case for the Ubuntu Typeface and it's presented as Ubuntu Sans. It now has 16 styles for the normal width and 16 for the Condensed version. It's available in the GutHub repo:
Direct download link: https://github.com/canonical/Ubuntu-Sans-fonts/releases/tag/v1.004 Very good news for those who use it and love it.
Best regards!

Hi there!
I couldn't resist to bring some more Fonts to the Forums (hope you don't mind). So, here we have:
DISPLAY - Catallina DISPLAY - Moniqa DISPLAY - Rousseau Deco HEADLINES - Lexend HEADLINES - Margaret HEADLINES - Rondal SANS SERIF - DM Sans SANS SERIF - Satoshi SANS SERIF - Supreme SANS SERIF - Switzer SERIF - Zodiak The main Topic has already been updated.
Best regards!.

+1!
i'm dying to see variable font support, especially as they become more popular.

Hi everyone, 
I make a calendar every year for my large extended family with all the birthdays and anniversaries printed on their respective dates. I started this custom several years ago, and at that time used Microsoft Publisher 2007 to whip up a calendar template for the year, and then added text boxes with all the holidays and special dates. Needless to say, that was not a very efficient way of doing things... Every year I had to manually move every single text box to the new calendar and make sure they all were more or less lined up and evenly spaced. This year I suddenly realized that I had Affinity Publisher at my disposal! So I went searching about these forums to find out a better, more automated way to publish calendars. A few posts, such as this one on calendar automation, and this one on data merges gave me some guidance in the right direction, and eventually I figured out a way to make a calendar in AfPub using the power of data merge to do the heavy lifting of inputting the dates and the power of text styles to make it all look right. Needless to say, this will save me a lot of time in the future! 
I'm attaching an AfPub template and a sample .csv file. Anyone is welcome to use/customize these if they would like. I'm sure there are more efficient ways of doing things that I might have missed, so I'd appreciate any constructive feedback you might have to offer! Enjoy! 
If you have questions about how (or why) I did something the way I did, feel free to ask! Downloading the samples and running the data merge correctly should give you results that look like this: 

Other resources that were useful:
Ubuntu Font: https://design.ubuntu.com/font/ Affinity Publisher Data Merge Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU98GmaQsFQ Deep Dive Data Merge in Affinity Publisher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wav8wuucZUY 2022-afpub-calendar.csv 2022-afpub-calendar-template.afpub

+1
I have a big font library of variable fonts I installed this week.  Then I start my work in Affinity and find out none of them work in Affinity Designer.  This means I can't even do basic graphic design tasks that involve any text, making this software completely useless for me. 
I have loved Affinity software.  But this lack of font support is a big problem for me, and most people I suppose.  This is the first time I will have to consider Adobe products out of pure necessity.  This should be a high priority item for the development team...I can't believe people have been asking for variable font support since 2020 and nothing has been done!  Very disappointing.
 

I had to revert back to the terrible Illustrator just because of lack of variable fonts support in Designer. I almost forgot how outdated the Illustrator really is. Sure they have this 'awesome' text-to-vector 'AI' (huge selling point to some), but the UX and the user experience is awful. Adobe even messed up the variable fonts support in the newest InDesign 2024.
So yes, please, make the variable fonts possible across the Affinity Suite. Please!

While I am not suggesting you are not aware of the seriousness of the lack of this feature, I do want to highlight that, at least for me, this is the biggest obstacle why I cannot migrate from Adobe to Affinity fully. Currently I am using the two simultaniously and in many aspects Affinity is on pair or even better than Adobe, until I have to use fonts... I literally cannot edit 80% of my legacy files since I broadly use Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts and some of the baked-in Microsoft fonts like Bahnschrift, which is a variable-only solution (AFAIK). So, if you really want to compete, this feature is a must, and yesterday was too late in my opinion for implementing it. 

Voicing my support for this request, not only as a type designer seeking a strong proofing tool when I work on my own fonts, but as a graphic artist and developer who would love to be able to use the hundreds of fonts which I choose to purchase and store only the OTVAR versions of for their smaller sizes, easier font family management, and greater flexibility.

+1

+1

I've used Photo, Designer, and Publisher since 2019, and I love them. Like many of the commenters before me, I looked forward to variable font support in V2, and was sorely disappointed when it was not implemented. My vote is for implementation as soon as possible.
Thank you very much!
SirCake

@Patrick Connor I am very happy to see positive feedback on my penultimate post, by the way. As for the other right above this one, where I mentioned writing papers and giving the industry as a whole a proper jolt, I really meant it. As a typography user, creator and educator, I am not too happy about the current lacking – nay, half-assed, if I may be so blunt – implementation of variable OTF fonts in software packages; sure, it… works, and we need it also in Affinity regardless of its current state, but we can and should do better as a collective.
Very conveniently, as part of my PhD, I still have to publish a second paper until the end of next year, and even after that, we – sadly, or thankfully, I guess I'll figure out in due time if I can handle the pressure – in our research centre have to fill a certain biennial quota of publications, so… we might as well make truly useful ones. Patents seem to be highly valued over there as well, and my supervisor has some experience with those (you know, with his calligraphy app for the iPad and whatnot) and I wouldn't mind joining him in that club, so… if you're interested in taking the reins and really setting trends, hit me up.
We're actually both part of a team of ten researchers, all working on this kind of stuff, but I'd say we're the ones more technologically-minded of the bunch, and it also bears reminding that Prof. Brandão has always been a strong advocate of Affinity and other tech underdogs (Glyphs.app, with whose developers we keep close contact and whose support we consistently get for our teaching endeavours, also comes to mind). If you want to check us and our work out, you can find us at https://typo.fa.ulisboa.pt/en/about/ .

This one takes the cake… Even the completely discombobulated Microsoft, which has a great typography department but still fails to support something as basic as OpenType ligatures across the entirety of the Office Suite (hey, if I want ligatures in my Excel spreadsheets, I want them, g*dammit… 😂 Now, in all seriousness, it irks me to no end having to use legacy fi and fl Unicode characters in PowerPoint, which I sometimes use for presentations in typography events), seems to be progressing in the right direction…
I will also add that if Serif isn't in contact with other developers, or at the very least with specialized academics and type designers, with developing standards in mind, they should. Variable typefaces are a veritable UX conundrum, and I completely feel the developers' pain in trying to support something as… anarchic as the variable OTF format, not just at the technical, behind-the-scenes level, but especially at the user-facing one.
Yes, all those text-based parameters and sliders make OpenType features, with its predetermined names grounded in tradition, seem user-friendly by comparison, I know. If you want my €0,02? Type designers being, err, experts in vector design, perhaps a future variable OTF version/spec should let them add specialized glyphs as visual labels/aids for their custom variable axes' end-, mid- and even custom points, which would then be used automatically by graphic design software packages. Hey, maybe I will even write a paper on that… Any of you peepz in?

Adobe seems to support them just fine. Of course, they are both the creators and main implementers of the PDF format, and creators, distributors and heavy promoters of variable OTF fonts, seeing how it's just a development of their old Multiple Master format (seriously, the other day I was playing around with a really old version of Illustrator, running on System 7.6 on top of Basilisk II, and I was absolutely shocked at just how similar the interface for manipulating Type I MM fonts was to their current implementation), so they obviously have their work cut out for them.
Unless Adobe, Corel et al. have some sort of weird patents, it should be just a case of opening their files and reverse-engineer them. Voilá, presto! Anyway, and AFAIK from my own look into it way back when, Adobe's apps just take whatever interpolated values you picked and export the end result as bespoke, automatically-generated and embedded fonts for the relevant text strings (yes, a separate one for each combination of variables), so there's no need for converting stuff to curves, losing the ability to select text or ballooning file sizes, the works.
Of course, when reimporting, you absolutely must have also an embedded Illustrator file stream, otherwise you're completely screwed. Perhaps you could look into making your own implementation of PDF files with embedded .afdesign or .SVG streams, or just metadata for the relevant text strings to save on file size, so that one could in theory reconstitute those multiple resulting fonts into their parent variable OTF fonts/styles?
As others have said, variable OTF fonts are just not going away; not this time, and especially not with the might of Adobe TypeKit and Google Fonts behind them. Heck, even I wrote a paper on those; you can check it out in my ORCiD page in my bio if you want. And, as I've said before, my students are really using them in earnest (… as attested in said paper), which means that when they leave the Uni and enter the workforce, they'll either keep using Adobe CC, or switch to something else altogether, like Sketch.
I know you don't like to hear this, and please don't shoot the messenger, but… I did warn Serif (a company called, of all names… SERIF!) years in advance of just how relevant and pervasive they would become. 🤷‍♂️
I cannot stress this enough, and to all the people rightly clamouring for RTL support: variable OTF font support should be included in a splashy v.2.x update (not a v.2.x.x one, but a full-blown point update, and maybe even a jump to v.2.5 for good measure), and RTL could very well wait for v.3… Allow me to explain: the RTL market is not even considering Affinity apps at the moment, at all, so they're not exactly invested in them, whereas a lot of designers, be they young and aspiring or established veterans, may have bought Affinity 1.x (let alone 2.x, because this thread and all related discussions date back to the v.1 days, if I may remind you all), with the expectation of it being a professional package somewhat approaching feature-parity with its peers (in their Latin-centric bubble, for sure, but it is undeniable that the vast majority of the design market in the West indeed doesn't need RTL; and full disclaimer: I'm a type designer with two finished but as of yet not commercially available fonts which support Arabic, so I fully understand what's at stake and feel RTL users' pain). And variable fonts being an external development, long in the making and over which Serif does not have much control, they are something third-party developers must adapt to and properly support, ASAP, and not the other way around.
As I've said, the penalty can actually be people switching back to whatever software package they were using before, or to a different alternative to the proverbial 800lb gorilla in the middle of the room, just so they can stay up-to-date and competitive. The best way Serif can ensure people stay in the Affinity bandwagon for v.3 is to give them the bare essentials, and typography being the basis of design (think about it; other media and visual resources such as, say, photography or illustration can exist in standalone form, but not typography, or not to the same extent), yep, supporting the most popular formats available is as essential as being able to import and export in all popular vector and bitmap formats. Would you like being limited in what camera, or drawing tablet, or brush packs, or whatever you could buy for your creative endeavours because your supposedly very much up-to-date software package of choice refused to support them? Now extend the same exercise to something as basic as typefaces…

+1 for RTL and variable fonts.

Please consider a timeline for implementing variable fonts across the Affinity suite. I have, but for this, entirely jumped ship from Adobe.

I will say this: my MA students, future designers, ARE using variable fonts as we speak. I have been warning Serif developers all this time, and they won't listen. They have several high-value users and testers connected to the industry and academia at the highest level, following – nay, setting – the trends (guess what I'm about to do when I finish my PhD in… typography education? 🙄), and yet… here we are.

Let's just ignore the 500lb pink gorilla in the middle of the room that is Adobe (they created the format, after all, and had already come up with Multiple Master fonts before it – I tried those on an ancient version of Ai running on a Basilisk II System 7 VM, and it's shockingly similar to the current implementation, down to the generic parameter sliders, so I'm guessing it just failed due to lack of support from type design applications, third party vector and photo editing and DTP apps, etc.), and look at one of Serif's actual competitors on the Mac, Sketch:
https://www.sketch.com/blog/variable-fonts-improved-opentype-support-and-a-new-data-plugin-whats-new-in-sketch/

Sketch v.59, from 20-freaking-19, from four years ago, back when Affinity v.2 was just a blip on the radar (likely an internal Alpha, or a set of notes on a whiteboard, or something), supported variable fonts. Sure, Sketch is very much geared towards web and UX design, but there had been already such a request here in the forums the year before, as was already requested 2016 and heavily commented by yours truly the next year onwards! And I'm commenting here because a musician friend of mine (a musician who works in banking, not one of my design students, so you can see just how mainstream these can and will become), who uses a Mac, wants do do his own design work and variable fonts came up in conversation; I recommended him either Affinity or Sketch, but I'm guessing that if he enjoys playing with those, you won't get his patronage, and through no fault other than your own. 🤷‍♂️
Seven years, guys. Seven years. And at least six years of me warning you that it would eventually become a serious omission. There are now people, both here in the forums and out of them, literally skipping on the v.2 upgrade (or on Affinity altogether) because of this. This can't be a v.3 feature, it *has* to be added to v.2 at some point. No ifs, no buts.

Hi there!  New to the forum, long time user of design software.  I thought I'd throw my $0.02 into the ring here as this has recently been a pain point for me.
Variable font support isn't only about what cut of a typeface you prefer using, it's also massively helpful when authoring typefaces.  Whereas users get the option of interpolating between different axes, typeface designers no longer have to create and maintain as many individual letterforms and can also rely on interpolation to generate different cuts of the font, either statically or through a variable font file.  Don't need that when designing?  That's cool!  Stick to the regular weights from 100-900 or use static exports (currently the only option we have in this software), but variable fonts are unquestionably the direction the industry is going in because of the flexibility offered to users and lower effort required from type designers for the same product.
Another key advantage of variable fonts hold over static cuts lies in web design and animation, two fields that aren't currently served by Serif's software.  These use cases don't matter when exclusively using the Affinity suite of tools, but it's not acceptable to be unable to match styles used elsewhere — especially when required by brand guidelines.  On our website, variable fonts allow us to serve a single .WOFF2 file with support for both sans and semi-monospaced text at any weight we choose while using a fraction of the size that would otherwise be required when serving static cuts.  We also get to smoothly interpolate between weights for things like hover states.
In this specific example, we use Recursive as one of our brand fonts.  Currently I am unable to use the Affinity suite to set text with Recursive's monospaced axis set to 0.51 (semi monospaced with added slab serifs) due to lack of variable font support.  We use Recursive set to mono=0.51 for the better spacing afforded in instances where a monospaced font is good to convey information (this text is data or for branding reasons, we use it for titles), but doesn't actually benefit from actually being monospaced.  It's become such an issue when creating graphics for our brand that I'll probably have to buy Illustrator again, what a bummer!
In closing, I feel like I read somewhere that this would require a fairly significant overhaul to the entire type rendering engine.  As somebody who works in software I understand that changes like this may seem small to end users but can actually be quite a large undertaking to implement.  Something that I've been very impressed with regarding Affinity's suite of tools is the care put into creating a software package that is both cohesive for end users while remaining technically consistent, generally with a focus on doing things correctly — especially regarding colour.  All I ask is when prioritizing future features, maybe consider bumping variable font support up the list?  I'm excited for the day your already pretty good type rendering engine becomes best-in-class!

Many of you probably already noticed it. I felt strangely happy when I saw it, congrats.

99 bucks for, uhh ... counts on fingers ... SEVEN! count 'em, 7 bits of software. I haven't used an Apple product since the Apple /// and the Lisa (heh. have I mentioned that before?) but I happily laid out the cash. Counts on fingers again ... THREE! count'em, 3 bits of software that I will use. That's like ... counts some more, does dividing by 3 fingers, sums something, err, maybe not ... 33 bucks a crack. Ya. That's it. I paid 33 bucks for three bits of software. When I bought v1 two years ago, I think I paid 27 bucks each. Now someone is pissed because they're paying 6 bucks more. Whiners gonna whine, I guess.
Is my math wrong? Did I count wrong? Did I miss a finger somewhere? Am I missing a finger?
So, basically, v2 is great value for money, notwithstanding two years of inflation and a 6 buck increase in price per unit.
If I might be so bold to suggest to the whiners and shiners: You might want to pick up the latest product at the sale price before December 14, because if you don't, we will all be subjected to a completely new and not unheard round of whining and shining.
That's all, folks.

🥱Been posted and addressed over and over.
Clearly, you should just buy (sorry, rent) the Adobe suite.
They aren't greedy and you'll save a ton of money.

Hi All - again I appreciate all the feedback on this, I can assure you it’s all been listened to. However, this seems to be digressing quite a lot and we will now lock this thread. I’m going to post a fresh post with my original statement in announcements (this one will be moved into the question forum). This will allow me to post any further updates about this on a clean post, particularly when we have the free content pack for V1 upgraders available 👍
Thanks again,
Ash

As an amateur user I'd prefer to get a special upgrade price rather than special launch offer addressed to everyone and time-limited. As I clarified i my topic about the upgrade I don't consider currently provided new tools or functions essential. I'd prefer to wait what happens in the future and then buy an upgrade for guaranteed lowered price, because I have no incomes from using AP.
BUT I UNDERSTAND Serif motivation, I understand that forcing people to buy upgrade outside the AppStore would be extremely risky and stupid.
I also understand that my personal perspective is specific. Other companies require regular payments each year and it seems that people have much less problem with this.
As for the price - some comments are really ridiculous. I'm from one of the Central European countries. Sure, we are not as poor as many other nations, but still definitely not as wealthy as people in Germany, Switzerland or Netherlands. Still single Affinity app in launch offer costs less than single computer game, less than one pair of well known brand jeans (actually, depending on the brand, 30-70% less!) or less than my recent ophthalmologist visit which lasted ten minutes ;)...
Sure, as a hobbyist I understand that we're less willing to pay for something which isn't necessary, but when professional users, some of them still paying for Adobe, claim that Affinity price is too high for their budget... that must be trolling.
So, let's stay serious and If we do criticize, let it be constructive criticism.

Here's a thread from 2014...  It's crazy to think that you would have implemented this by now (2022) unless you're going the Reason Studios route, "We know what you need, you don't!"  unless I'm missing something....