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Thanks, that's disappointing given the widespread use of variable fonts. It seems like it's mostly supported as it works well in the UI, print, export preview window, and rasterised PDF. I guess it must be a PDF-specific limitation? I can see from your signature that you've tried the latest beta; do you know whether the issue been addressed or whether any insight has been given on whether Serif will address it soon/at all?

Un-install the variable fonts, and install the static fonts. Then the Light will be there. Affinity apps do not support variable fonts. So what you get is only the default master in the variable font, which is Regular.

+1 to this feature. Nowadays more and more fonts are providing variable styles. Especially free and open-source efforts such as many of Google Fonts' best typefaces. Even major browsers support variable styles, which makes their addition crucial for design apps.

It’s not just the preview. The Affinity apps don’t properly support variable fonts yet.

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.)

Hi Alex and welcome to the forums. Affinity doesn't support variable fonts so you will get unexpected results when trying to use them. Always use the static versions of those fonts. Cheers

Thanks for that description, @kenmcd. From it, I would say that variable fonts do not "just work" in PDF files, which was my point. What you have in the PDF is a constructed static font (or set of them), and the methodology of getting them there is significantly more complex than for static fonts.

@LondonSquirrel Reading you, the impression is rather strange. It is as if, since the Affinity suite does not yet support variable fonts or font collections, you would have to argue strongly that variable fonts and font collections are of no use in print. This reasoning is far from sound. It is also far removed from reality. Put simply, most text, design and DTP programs support variable fonts and font collections. But the Affinity suite does not yet.

This is how montserrat is constructed as seen in the Font editor Gylphs At the moment Affinity doesn't support Variable fonts, I have no idea why?

Often when you find what seem to be odd extra nodes in full font families which have weight and width styles, and optical size, the reason the nodes are there is to facilitate interpolation in the variable font which includes all those axes in one font. I do not have the variable font, but I do have the full large family. So I looked at other weights and widths to see if they required this structure. The D in the normal Black font we are using here has only 2 units between the nodes on the right side. In the D in the XNarrow Black that space is 24 units - which gives it a bit of a flat side. In some of the other characters that space is even bigger (e.g. in the O it is 36). So it appears the designer wants a bit of a flat side in some cases. And the way interpolation works requires this same structure in all the masters. Then the static fonts get the same structure as they come from the same masters. I did test the XNarrow Black font (which mostly has bigger spaces between those nodes) with the test doc and it only showed one artifact with the C. The inner curve on the C only has a space of 6 units between those nodes. So my guess is it is a design decision and required to facilitate interpolation.

UPDATE/Solution: Hey, folks. I've managed to resolve my issue. While I'm still looking into this further, the culprit seems to be a single font. I use FontBase to help organize and curate my many fonts by project and it seems that in loading a particular project collection - which had previously worked without issue - triggered the never ending crash cycle. As I had already cleared the cache and uninstalled/reinstalled the software multiple times - and the font hadn't been an issue before - I never thought of disabling FontBase. The font in question is Ellen Luff's Hackney. The font comes in both OTF and TTF flavours, with the latter being vector and the former SVG. It is the SVG OTF version that was causing the repeating crash. I have confirmed that this is the culprit behind my woes and am able to trigger the issue by toggling the OTF font on/off. I thank you all for having read my lengthy post and hope that this adds one more piece to the potential puzzle of future problem-solvers. CRASH DETAILS - In the event another user should find themselves in a circumstance that sounds familiar. ---- RePost from Franny49 Topic ---- Yesterday Affinity Designer 2 unexpectedly crashed while working on a project. I've had the odd crash, but this was seemingly out of the blue. I started the program again and shortly after loading the project it crashed again. So, I followed the instructions provided: - Disabled openCL - crashed. - Cleared all user data - still crashed. - Uninstall, cleared user files and appdata and reinstalled after a restart - still crashed. - Rolled back last Windows update - crasheroo! - Got desperate and updated to Windows 11 - crash-test-dummy... "Crash" Behaviour: The app crash is not dependent on any particular operation/execution and can be repeated/reproduced with every launch. There appears to be some variable to the runtime stability, but it doesn't appear to be related to any particular action. Even if you don't interact with the program at all after launch it will still crash. Sometimes its 10 seconds after launch - other times its been as much as a minute. Either way, it crashes. There are a couple noticeable stutters exhibited prior to the program locking-up and subsequently crashing. I'm hoping the screen record helps to some degree for diagnostic purposes. No crash report has been produced. I'm using a Surface Book 3 with 32gb ram and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 TI - now operating on Windows 11 (sigh). Other Trial & Error Details: - Tried to launch Photo 2 and Publisher 2 (2.0.4) - also same results. - Tried Designer 1 (last updated version) - crashes. - Tried Designer 2 Beta (latest build) - crashes. - Tried launching software with Surface Book screen dethatched from base (uses internal Intel Iris GPU when separated) - Johnny Crash. I'm really at a lose here, folks. I've used Affinity for several years now and truly love it. But this is a problem that I don't know how to resolve and am desperate (clearly - Windows 11 desperate). If anyone has any help or suggestions - please share. I'll try anything. My only other thought is a compete computer reformat. That's far from ideal, but if I knew it would work, I'd do it now. Thank you in advance.

Yes, I was surprised that "the built-in Mac pdf-maker exports the fonts correctly." And I assume that it looked OK in the APub interface. So it appears that on the Mac it can connect the variable font with its PDF engine. And that PDF engine also supports variable fonts. I do know that on Macs all applications use their font picker interface. And since it supports variable fonts it can display them. I use Windows so I am not real familiar with all that happens on a Mac. The Abelone font situation is sort of the same - the Mac font list supports Color-SVG fonts. Abelone is an OpenType Color-SVG font which includes a normal monochrome back-up. That backup is essentially a normal OpenType-PS (OTF) font. The SVG drawings are in the SVG table inside the font. The PS drawings are in the normal CFF table. If an application knows how to use the back-up font, that is what it will display. So that is what you see in APub. Note: that is what the back-up outlines actually look like - with all the filled-in areas. It appears the back-up glyphs were automatically created by Fontself Maker from the SVG drawings ... so they are bad. The font designer could clean them up if desired. Free font.

Variable Fonts are not supported by the Affinity programmes. And I think TrueTypeCollecton fonts (.ttc) are not supported either. So you have to download and use the static versions of the fonts.

Ugh. Don't do that. 😬 Make yourself a set of "corporate brand" static fonts with the settings you want. This would also be good for sharing with other company employees, etc. who may not be using advanced applications. Slice is a free open-source GUI tool. https://github.com/source-foundry/Slice https://slice-gui.netlify.app/ or Google fonttools (FOSS) runs in Python https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools https://fonttools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/varLib/instancer.html or Samsa - free online tool https://lorp.github.io/samsa/src/samsa-gui.html or Dinamo Font Gauntlet - free online tool https://fontgauntlet.com/ or just open the variable font in a font editor, add the instances you want, and export them as statics. Take about 15-20 minutes in FontLab. Love Recursive. Fully uniwidth. Rare.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. Thanks for your input, and for understanding that it may be more difficult to implement than some of us users seem to recognize I'm curious (as I'm still educating myself in this area) what output formats you're using where it would be useful. For example, you've mentioned web design and animation, but if Affinity could support Variable fonts, what output formats would you be using where you would find the support useful?

@Shrinks99 Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums and thanks for your expert opinion on this topic. I think the overhaul of the engine would be needed for RTL (mixed direction) text, but I do not think that support for variable fonts is as difficult and I too hope it can be addressed before too long

Ok, So yes there are some potential drawbacks with editing pdfs in Publisher. I think as a whole, Affinity is not ready for prime time. Presently I am having issues importing large pictures into Publisher, it needs to work like every other program that is a page layout program in that sense. Variable Fonts are a big deal too. I have to fiddle around with exporting to PDF too, it's not up to par. Mind you my critiques are not "don't get it" but "please fix it" to affinity. It;s a great product at a fair price and it does some amazing stuff, and some stuff is frustrating. I keep trying it to use it more and more. One thing is now that Adobe no longer has Pantone spot colors (for the most part) Affinity is the way to go. Not having spot colors was a big mark against a lot of ok programs.

+1 from me. Having variable fonts would be a very beneficial feature for Affinity Designer. A lot of the fonts on Google Fonts are variable now. https://fonts.google.com/?vfonly=true

Variable fonts, from any source, are not supported in any Affinity application. You will need to install the standard fonts instead, rather than the variable fonts, or switch to a different application.

I don't think I have been given a single file from any design house with variable fonts. Of course my experience is anecdotal but I am in no way panicked for variable fonts. I like the idea of them, but have never felt a need to really get beyond the standard font families that have thin, light, regular, medium, semi bold, bold, black. Even then most fonts do not have that entire set, they might be light, regular and bold. I wonder what the real difference is between want and need here.

Thanks for your help, @kenmcd! I un-installed both variable fonts ("Montserrat-Italic-VariableFont_wght.ttf" and "Montserrat-VariableFont_wght.ttf"), and now when I export PDFs of documents that use the Montserrat font family, the live text font weight doesn't change. Thanks again!

Maybe worth to know that the use of coloured, variable fonts is limited in Affinity yet. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&q=variable fonts&quick=1&search_and_or=and&sortby=relevancy

This saddens me. In preparing for Comicraft Fonts' annual sale, I had chosen some variable fonts that looked cool. I hope Serif implements this in future updates.

That is not, in general, true. Windows 10 does not restrict font installation. On the other hand, I suppose it's possible that Windows 10S does, if that's what you're actually using. The Affinity applications use the fonts installed on your system. More than that, they lack some support for very old fonts, but I don't know the details. They also lack support for newer Variable, vector, and color fonts, which is a problem for some users.

They already use the FreeType2 library to render fonts in their packages and it works across all these platforms. It has supported variable fonts (aka variations) since 2017.