jamessouttar

But I feel like I’m making a case here, when there is no case to be made. Variable fonts are a reality. All the big type foundries and most of the smaller ones are making them. Every major web browser can use them. Apple are using them for their operating system. Adobe support them on their desktop publishing apps. And supporting variable fonts doesn‘t affect support for existing PostScript and TrueType fonts. 

If Affinity doesn‘t get with the programme, it will get left behind. I’d like Affinity to stay ahead of the curve; I’m sure we all would. But to do that it can’t afford to be sniffy about emerging standards. (Support for web image formats is another area where it has fallen behind — we now have to use other apps to create WebP and AVIF, something that could easily have been incorporated into Photo.)

The difference is between those who are designing just for print and those who are designing across web and print. Variable fonts are becoming essential for good typography on the web, because each additional weight/style of a font family adds to the page overhead and this can cause the site to slip in its Google rankings. Since variable font files can be accessed through named instances which are the same as thin, light, regular, medium, semibold, bold, black etc. (and since type designers increasingly create a family of fonts by designing a thin and a black and interpolating between them, which is what a variable font does), a variable font file can deliver what the font family does, but from a single file. What the font family can‘t deliver are the infinite range of intermediates between styles that the variable font is capable of. And when we have more than one axis (e.g. optical as well as weight variations) the possibility of replicating the same look as the web gets further removed — weight 740, optical 67 can end up being a long way away from 700 Bold Display (assuming there even are optical styles in the family).

But I feel like I’m making a case here, when there is no case to be made. Variable fonts are a reality. All the big type foundries and most of the smaller ones are making them. Every major web browser can use them. Apple are using them for their operating system. Adobe support them on their desktop publishing apps. And supporting variable fonts doesn‘t affect support for existing PostScript and TrueType fonts. 

If Affinity doesn‘t get with the programme, it will get left behind. I’d like Affinity to stay ahead of the curve; I’m sure we all would. But to do that it can’t afford to be sniffy about emerging standards. (Support for web image formats is another area where it has fallen behind — we now have to use other apps to create WebP and AVIF, something that could easily have been incorporated into Photo.)

But I feel like I’m making a case here, when there is no case to be made. Variable fonts are a reality. All the big type foundries and most of the smaller ones are making them. Every major web browser can use them. Apple are using them for their operating system. Adobe support them on their desktop publishing apps. And supporting variable fonts doesn‘t affect support for existing PostScript and TrueType fonts. 

If Affinity doesn‘t get with the programme, it will get left behind. I’d like Affinity to stay ahead of the curve; I’m sure we all would. But to do that it can’t afford to be sniffy about emerging standards. (Support for web image formats is another area where it has fallen behind — we now have to use other apps to create WebP and AVIF, something that could easily have been incorporated into Photo.)

The difference is between those who are designing just for print and those who are designing across web and print. Variable fonts are becoming essential for good typography on the web, because each additional weight/style of a font family adds to the page overhead and this can cause the site to slip in its Google rankings. Since variable font files can be accessed through named instances which are the same as thin, light, regular, medium, semibold, bold, black etc. (and since type designers increasingly create a family of fonts by designing a thin and a black and interpolating between them, which is what a variable font does), a variable font file can deliver what the font family does, but from a single file. What the font family can‘t deliver are the infinite range of intermediates between styles that the variable font is capable of. And when we have more than one axis (e.g. optical as well as weight variations) the possibility of replicating the same look as the web gets further removed — weight 740, optical 67 can end up being a long way away from 700 Bold Display (assuming there even are optical styles in the family).

Figma now has support for RTL fonts (for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew etc.) and has supported variable fonts — through a plug-in — for some time already. Over the last few years I’ve been a big Affinity fan, and supporter, but Affinity is slipping behind when it comes to typography (there are still some rough edges with font support, especially for those with lots of alternatives and contextual features). Type is central to what most of us use Affinity applications for (especially Publisher) and I’d like to see their type handling be ahead of the curve, rather than perpetually languishing behind it. 

Figma now has support for RTL fonts (for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew etc.) and has supported variable fonts — through a plug-in — for some time already. Over the last few years I’ve been a big Affinity fan, and supporter, but Affinity is slipping behind when it comes to typography (there are still some rough edges with font support, especially for those with lots of alternatives and contextual features). Type is central to what most of us use Affinity applications for (especially Publisher) and I’d like to see their type handling be ahead of the curve, rather than perpetually languishing behind it. 

No, basically font designers have put — and are increasingly putting — this control into users’ hands. And that‘s the point: the font industry is moving over to variable. From a type designer‘s point of view, it‘s much more interesting and satisfying to create a variable font; typographically it‘s a much more sophisticated and powerful tool. I concentrated in my comment on the practical stuff variable fonts can do, but there are so many cool new things variable fonts can do — and not just with letterforms. For instance, because variable fonts interpolate between glyphs, animation in digital environments becomes incredibly smooth (Laurence Penney’s animated Muybridge horse, on his Axis-Praxis site, is an early case in point). It makes sense for symbol libraries (fontawesome, ionicons, etc.) to be in variable format too, to support the growing range of different looks for the same icon.

And here‘s the situation with variable fonts. All the main browsers came out with support for them in 2018. Apple’s and Microsoft‘s systems support them (Apple‘s SF Pro system font *is a variable font*). Most of the other main graphics packages support them (Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Corel Draw etc.). They are not just the future, but the present too. But Affinity doesn’t see them as a priority. WAKE UP AFFINITY!!! You‘ve put yourselves into the same category as Internet Explorer!

I’m a print designer by background, and fine typography on paper is my first love. But these days, like so many others, I work across physical and digital media. I want the user‘s experience to be consistent across media — I don‘t want to be using one sophisticated font format on the web and a more primitive one in Publlisher/Designer/Photo (which is, ironically, an exact inversion of the first ten years of the web!) Most especially, I don‘t want to be stuck in 2017 forever because I went with the stubborn, knows-better graphics software provider.

The fuss? Well, it‘s to do with variability as a design tool. Suppose I have a two axis seriffed variable font — it‘s got a weight axis from super-light to extra-bold, and it‘s got an optical size axis which varies from a hyper-legible ‘caption‘ master with big counters, chunky serifs and minimal contrast to use at tiny sizes to a ‘display‘ master with maximal contrast, hairline thin strokes and serifs, etc. And I’m setting some body text with a headline. At the size that I’m using, 300 feels too light while 400 is too heavy. Using the slider, the ‘sweet spot‘ is about 360. I also want to dial down the contrast — but just a bit. There is some slightly bigger standfirst at the start of the text. It looks better lighter (320) and with more contrast. The subheads I want heavier (760 looks right) so I push the optical scale (but not as far as the display end). The headline, on the other hand, I want with fine hairlines (the optical scale is also tightening the letterspacing — not globally, like tracking, but as the type designer has adjusted it with the left and right sidebearings and kerning for each character). And there is a point where the headline just begins to sing... Does that make sense? Variable is giving fine control to the things that are important to a print designer. Once you‘ve had it, even the Adobe Originals kind of type family with a range of weights and two or three optical variants doesn‘t cut it.

Figma now has support for RTL fonts (for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew etc.) and has supported variable fonts — through a plug-in — for some time already. Over the last few years I’ve been a big Affinity fan, and supporter, but Affinity is slipping behind when it comes to typography (there are still some rough edges with font support, especially for those with lots of alternatives and contextual features). Type is central to what most of us use Affinity applications for (especially Publisher) and I’d like to see their type handling be ahead of the curve, rather than perpetually languishing behind it. 

Indeed. But many font vendors offer print and webfonts as an either/or/both option, along with licences for other applications, such as apps (MyFonts being the biggest of these). Variable fonts can be in .ttf, .woff and .woff2 formats (as well as .cff2, but this is currently not well supported). Typically one would install the .ttf on devices where one is using the font (e.g. for print) and the .woff or .woff2 format on web servers. This is the same whether one is using static or variable fonts. Variable fonts are just easier to keep track of, since there are one or two files (usually depending on whether roman and italics are included in a single font, or split).

Again, though, I will emphasise that I’m not advocating for variable fonts as a good idea. Variable fonts are happening. They are being driven by the web, but they are beneficial to designers working in physical media as well.

No, basically font designers have put — and are increasingly putting — this control into users’ hands. And that‘s the point: the font industry is moving over to variable. From a type designer‘s point of view, it‘s much more interesting and satisfying to create a variable font; typographically it‘s a much more sophisticated and powerful tool. I concentrated in my comment on the practical stuff variable fonts can do, but there are so many cool new things variable fonts can do — and not just with letterforms. For instance, because variable fonts interpolate between glyphs, animation in digital environments becomes incredibly smooth (Laurence Penney’s animated Muybridge horse, on his Axis-Praxis site, is an early case in point). It makes sense for symbol libraries (fontawesome, ionicons, etc.) to be in variable format too, to support the growing range of different looks for the same icon.

And here‘s the situation with variable fonts. All the main browsers came out with support for them in 2018. Apple’s and Microsoft‘s systems support them (Apple‘s SF Pro system font *is a variable font*). Most of the other main graphics packages support them (Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Corel Draw etc.). They are not just the future, but the present too. But Affinity doesn’t see them as a priority. WAKE UP AFFINITY!!! You‘ve put yourselves into the same category as Internet Explorer!

I’m a print designer by background, and fine typography on paper is my first love. But these days, like so many others, I work across physical and digital media. I want the user‘s experience to be consistent across media — I don‘t want to be using one sophisticated font format on the web and a more primitive one in Publlisher/Designer/Photo (which is, ironically, an exact inversion of the first ten years of the web!) Most especially, I don‘t want to be stuck in 2017 forever because I went with the stubborn, knows-better graphics software provider.

The fuss? Well, it‘s to do with variability as a design tool. Suppose I have a two axis seriffed variable font — it‘s got a weight axis from super-light to extra-bold, and it‘s got an optical size axis which varies from a hyper-legible ‘caption‘ master with big counters, chunky serifs and minimal contrast to use at tiny sizes to a ‘display‘ master with maximal contrast, hairline thin strokes and serifs, etc. And I’m setting some body text with a headline. At the size that I’m using, 300 feels too light while 400 is too heavy. Using the slider, the ‘sweet spot‘ is about 360. I also want to dial down the contrast — but just a bit. There is some slightly bigger standfirst at the start of the text. It looks better lighter (320) and with more contrast. The subheads I want heavier (760 looks right) so I push the optical scale (but not as far as the display end). The headline, on the other hand, I want with fine hairlines (the optical scale is also tightening the letterspacing — not globally, like tracking, but as the type designer has adjusted it with the left and right sidebearings and kerning for each character). And there is a point where the headline just begins to sing... Does that make sense? Variable is giving fine control to the things that are important to a print designer. Once you‘ve had it, even the Adobe Originals kind of type family with a range of weights and two or three optical variants doesn‘t cut it.

No, basically font designers have put — and are increasingly putting — this control into users’ hands. And that‘s the point: the font industry is moving over to variable. From a type designer‘s point of view, it‘s much more interesting and satisfying to create a variable font; typographically it‘s a much more sophisticated and powerful tool. I concentrated in my comment on the practical stuff variable fonts can do, but there are so many cool new things variable fonts can do — and not just with letterforms. For instance, because variable fonts interpolate between glyphs, animation in digital environments becomes incredibly smooth (Laurence Penney’s animated Muybridge horse, on his Axis-Praxis site, is an early case in point). It makes sense for symbol libraries (fontawesome, ionicons, etc.) to be in variable format too, to support the growing range of different looks for the same icon.

And here‘s the situation with variable fonts. All the main browsers came out with support for them in 2018. Apple’s and Microsoft‘s systems support them (Apple‘s SF Pro system font *is a variable font*). Most of the other main graphics packages support them (Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Corel Draw etc.). They are not just the future, but the present too. But Affinity doesn’t see them as a priority. WAKE UP AFFINITY!!! You‘ve put yourselves into the same category as Internet Explorer!

I’m a print designer by background, and fine typography on paper is my first love. But these days, like so many others, I work across physical and digital media. I want the user‘s experience to be consistent across media — I don‘t want to be using one sophisticated font format on the web and a more primitive one in Publlisher/Designer/Photo (which is, ironically, an exact inversion of the first ten years of the web!) Most especially, I don‘t want to be stuck in 2017 forever because I went with the stubborn, knows-better graphics software provider.

No, basically font designers have put — and are increasingly putting — this control into users’ hands. And that‘s the point: the font industry is moving over to variable. From a type designer‘s point of view, it‘s much more interesting and satisfying to create a variable font; typographically it‘s a much more sophisticated and powerful tool. I concentrated in my comment on the practical stuff variable fonts can do, but there are so many cool new things variable fonts can do — and not just with letterforms. For instance, because variable fonts interpolate between glyphs, animation in digital environments becomes incredibly smooth (Laurence Penney’s animated Muybridge horse, on his Axis-Praxis site, is an early case in point). It makes sense for symbol libraries (fontawesome, ionicons, etc.) to be in variable format too, to support the growing range of different looks for the same icon.

And here‘s the situation with variable fonts. All the main browsers came out with support for them in 2018. Apple’s and Microsoft‘s systems support them (Apple‘s SF Pro system font *is a variable font*). Most of the other main graphics packages support them (Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Corel Draw etc.). They are not just the future, but the present too. But Affinity doesn’t see them as a priority. WAKE UP AFFINITY!!! You‘ve put yourselves into the same category as Internet Explorer!

I’m a print designer by background, and fine typography on paper is my first love. But these days, like so many others, I work across physical and digital media. I want the user‘s experience to be consistent across media — I don‘t want to be using one sophisticated font format on the web and a more primitive one in Publlisher/Designer/Photo (which is, ironically, an exact inversion of the first ten years of the web!) Most especially, I don‘t want to be stuck in 2017 forever because I went with the stubborn, knows-better graphics software provider.

The fuss? Well, it‘s to do with variability as a design tool. Suppose I have a two axis seriffed variable font — it‘s got a weight axis from super-light to extra-bold, and it‘s got an optical size axis which varies from a hyper-legible ‘caption‘ master with big counters, chunky serifs and minimal contrast to use at tiny sizes to a ‘display‘ master with maximal contrast, hairline thin strokes and serifs, etc. And I’m setting some body text with a headline. At the size that I’m using, 300 feels too light while 400 is too heavy. Using the slider, the ‘sweet spot‘ is about 360. I also want to dial down the contrast — but just a bit. There is some slightly bigger standfirst at the start of the text. It looks better lighter (320) and with more contrast. The subheads I want heavier (760 looks right) so I push the optical scale (but not as far as the display end). The headline, on the other hand, I want with fine hairlines (the optical scale is also tightening the letterspacing — not globally, like tracking, but as the type designer has adjusted it with the left and right sidebearings and kerning for each character). And there is a point where the headline just begins to sing... Does that make sense? Variable is giving fine control to the things that are important to a print designer. Once you‘ve had it, even the Adobe Originals kind of type family with a range of weights and two or three optical variants doesn‘t cut it.

The fuss? Well, it‘s to do with variability as a design tool. Suppose I have a two axis seriffed variable font — it‘s got a weight axis from super-light to extra-bold, and it‘s got an optical size axis which varies from a hyper-legible ‘caption‘ master with big counters, chunky serifs and minimal contrast to use at tiny sizes to a ‘display‘ master with maximal contrast, hairline thin strokes and serifs, etc. And I’m setting some body text with a headline. At the size that I’m using, 300 feels too light while 400 is too heavy. Using the slider, the ‘sweet spot‘ is about 360. I also want to dial down the contrast — but just a bit. There is some slightly bigger standfirst at the start of the text. It looks better lighter (320) and with more contrast. The subheads I want heavier (760 looks right) so I push the optical scale (but not as far as the display end). The headline, on the other hand, I want with fine hairlines (the optical scale is also tightening the letterspacing — not globally, like tracking, but as the type designer has adjusted it with the left and right sidebearings and kerning for each character). And there is a point where the headline just begins to sing... Does that make sense? Variable is giving fine control to the things that are important to a print designer. Once you‘ve had it, even the Adobe Originals kind of type family with a range of weights and two or three optical variants doesn‘t cut it.

Just adding another voice for support for variable fonts. This is #1 on my list of priorities now.

I am now switching over to variable fonts on the web, and I realise how valuable it is to use the weight axis (and optical axis, where the font has it) to find the ‘sweet spot‘ for text and headlines in each situation. It‘s frustrating not being able to do the same in print (if I’m using 440 on the web, 400 or 500 are not matches in print). I’m thinking that it may be a matter of moving back to Adobe for a while until Affinity catches up with this. I don‘t want to do this, but it’s becoming a must-have feature.

Just adding another voice for support for variable fonts. This is #1 on my list of priorities now.

I am now switching over to variable fonts on the web, and I realise how valuable it is to use the weight axis (and optical axis, where the font has it) to find the ‘sweet spot‘ for text and headlines in each situation. It‘s frustrating not being able to do the same in print (if I’m using 440 on the web, 400 or 500 are not matches in print). I’m thinking that it may be a matter of moving back to Adobe for a while until Affinity catches up with this. I don‘t want to do this, but it’s becoming a must-have feature.

At work, we use Adobe. I am loving being able to use variable fonts in Indesign.
At home, I use Affinity. I want variable fonts! Especially since some of my favourite families are being updated as variable fonts.
It’s time.

Again, it’s getting better and better. I Will pre-order today. So much effort and a good tool.

Amazing and thank Affinity, Adam and his team. This has been a much anticipated design platform. Very exciting.
I didn't get the pre-order offer but wrote to the email on this thread. Can't wait to final release but I should mention that even though it is stated that these betas are "not suitable for production use" they are absolutely suitable for production use as they are more stable that the other software I have used by that other software company, and more feature rich. Consider - I can actually design multipage documents graphically, not just use a glorified word processor. 
One thing I am very much looking forward to is those Designer and Photo personas actually working. I really want to use Add, Subtract, Intersect, Xor and Divide functions in Publisher through these personas. This is the one function I wish were working now especially in creating fancy charts in my documents, not in Designer but in Publisher.

Thank you so much for this fantastic piece of work, it was/is fun to be a part of it – at least a little part