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Serif announced yesterday that variable fonts support is coming. Please see this message from Serif: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/affinity-and-canva-pledge/

If you want to use that font in Designer you'll need to uninstall the Variable version and install the Static version that Google Fonts also provides in the download file.

I don't think Canva is in the Adobe market at all. Affinity is. So I think Canva wants a slice of that pro market using the goodwill Affinity has/had to get a slice of it. The only reason Adobe would have for buying Canva or Affinity is to close i it down. That the Affinity PR mentioned variable fonts and a few other things going into Affinity in V2 suggests that Canva does want to move into the pro areas. I hope so. The BIG point about Affinity is that it is perpetual licences and not subscription.

My editor finished a book project and sent it to me as a package. When I open it up, it says 34 fonts and 34 missing fonts. She says on her end that she included the fonts. I also notice that there are some images out of place and a few wonky formatting issues as well, so obviously it didn't save and transmit as it looked as the source file on her computer. Any suggestions?

For me - don't know, don't care. The fonts are purposely broken junk. You should read through the longer explanation posts in the linked thread. Different applications and different operating systems have different text shapers, etc. Given the edge case here - of purposely broken multi-mapped demo fonts - I doubt the Affinity developers would prioritize this issue over many other far more important issues. Would be surprised if this gets "fixed" any time soon, if ever.

On my Mac there are 3 Wingdings fonts, named Wingdings, Wingdings 2, & Wingdings 3, stored in /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/ & availble in the Affinities, Textedit, & so on.

I am really nervous about this, as I expressed in my answers to your (ugh, Google) form. What I did not mention there, but should have, is the one thing that I really need from Affinity Publisher, and that it the ability to make either (or both!) ACCESSIBLE PDF files or E-BOOKS. I don’t care about variable fonts, I now have footnotes (thank you), but not yet accessibility. I don’t see how Canva will help with that.

These two days have felt a little like an emotional roller coaster. It’s a little embarrassing to admit that the choices a software company has made could have that effect on some of us, but I guess it goes to show how we felt about it before, and how many of us have invested a lot of time not only in using it but also in participating with the users on this forum. Today’s email from Serif/Canva has helped change my mood. Yesterday I was contemplating a wait-and-see approach with a very pessimistic feeling of keeping an eye on the emergency exits. Today I am still in a wait-and-see approach, but it has shifted to a more cautiously optimistic outlook. It seems the general mindset among the posters who have contributed to this discussion since the latest email is still rather discouraged. I admit that now we are on edge and fearing the worst, but supposing that they truly do intend to maintain Affinity as a stand-alone product always with a perpetual license option, and the future proves that to be true, I do not know how they could say anything different than what they have not said, so I am willing to give it a chance. Truly, I want it to work out since I like Affinity so well. Consider that yesterday’s statement was worded so carefully to make no promises other than that we can continue to use what we already bought with unspecific promises about updates in the version 2 cycle. There was no promise beyond that. It practically read like a promise that all would change after that. However, today, we have a promise that it will go beyond 2.0. The copy of the email says this: “We are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future.” Note that “in the future,” is there unqualified, so we could read it just as more PR to make us think they hear us all while intending “in the future” to mean for a set period of time. But in the infographic, we instead see these words: “Perpetual licenses will always be offered and we will always price Affinity fairly and affordably.” Notice the double use of “always.” That’s a big word, and remember that statements such as these are crafted very carefully. I know that we may be inclined to be skeptical even here, but at the very least, making a promise such as that means they are betting the goodwill and continued loyalty on their customers on their ability to keep that statement, because now if they ever take away perpetual license, they will have broken their word. And if they really mean it, what could they have said any different to make us feel better? I don’t know, so I think for now I will take them at their word, which is fair. And of course, we will hold them to their word, which also is fair. That being the case, I am eager to wait and see what this might mean for the promised additional development resources. For example, variable fonts were mentioned in the examples of features that they want to bring in, and unless I have forgotten, that is the first time they have ever indicated they do hope to add it to the feature list. I am excited for that. Quick question: formerly we were used to the name Serif as the company and Affinity as the product, but the current communication seems to keep referring to Affinity as the team behind the product. Does the name “Serif” as such still have any meaning or continue to exist?

They know, but Variable Fonts are a complex issue to handle, and much more complex than many users realize.

Desperately hoping that Canva's involvement means that variable fonts will be prioritised.

Paul was responding to another user's comment that seemed to say that Google Fonts provides only Variable fonts. That statement is false, and thus Paul's statement has value, even if it doesn't apply to you. In any case, Nikolas Type also provides the static versions of Solare, if that's really the font you want to use. So you wouldn't need to use Google Fonts for that one.

This sounds like a variation on the age-old problem of some characters in an exported PDF file being incorrect if the default ‘Subset fonts’ is switched on. The ‘tt’ pair is included as a ligature in many fonts (including Outfit) but font subsetting only sees the ‘t’, so ‘tt’ and other ligatures are omitted from the exported PDF file. If you switch off ‘Subset fonts’, the entire font will be embedded in the PDF file (making it much bigger, but ensuring that any ligatures will be displayed correctly).

How do I make this font similar to the one on Adobe? They are the same font

Hi @AnnieBro, Thanks for your report! As you've mentioned, our team are aware of issues with fonts within Affinity on iPadOS 17 and due to these known issues our development team currently recommend installing fonts outside of the Affinity app - either directly into the iPadOS Settings using Font 'profiles', or using a free third party Font Manager, such as iFont. I'd recommend removing the font from the Affinity app settings you have installed already, then once you have installed the font as a profile/through a font manager, you should then find this correctly appears within the Affinity app. I hope this helps

As a longtime user of InDesign (I used it back in the day when it was called PageMaker and wasn't an Adobe product) and someone who uses it 'in the trenches' I thought it might be interesting to make a couple constructive of points. Well done Affinity you have just about created an InDesign 'killer'. But at the moment there are a couple of things you might want to change: SHOW SPECIAL CHARACTER - from someone who went through the typesetting craze (and had to use Quarks XPress package) I have learnt to rely (totally) on using and seeing 'Special Characters' on screen. In the 'real world' of design etc., this is a must; it's not a deal breaker but, it would be incredibly helpful for the size and colour of the 'special characters' to be seen. If you don't like them, you can always turn them off! SHOW TYPOGRAPHY - Why in gods name is this not able to be docked as a side panel? As again, being a typography nut, this would be really useful for me... GLYPH BROWSER - this panel would be excellent if it allowed you to use a 'slider' to make fonts bigger or smaller. Hope someone takes notice of the above points! We really need Affinity as a real opponent to Adobe. Cheers!

I now used Junicode in InDesign, and might have a little (but only little) better understanding on the way glyphs are listed in Stylistic Sets and Character Variables (both in InDesign and Affinity apps). They do get listed also in InDesign as a category (rather than just contextually as alternatives for selected glyphs), but this is not so obvious for anyone not well aware of internals of OpenType technology unless using sorts of super fonts as Junicode. It seems that InDesign lists alternatives for a selected glyph based on encoding (glyph names), as e.g. for Latin capital letter Eng it also lists Runic letters Ing and Ingwaz, so stylistically and otherwise totally unrelated glyphs. CorelDRAW does the same thing when using its OpenType contextual selector, as does VectorStyler. Perhaps this is what you mean by "construction" of aalt glyphs for glyph selection, whether they exist in OT for a selected glyph or not? Anyway, when having Junicode active, InDesign does list up to 20 Stylistic Sets for the font, and, it seems, without showing the table names, all available Character Variable tables, as well (in order): cvetc.mp4 The screen recorder I use on Windows unfortunately appears to disable tool tips so the glyph names (and cv codes) shown by InDesign are not displayed in recording, but it seems all tables from cv01 to cv98 get listed. There are also some other unnamed tables like rtlm which lists Runic letters. On the other hand, Photoshop 2024 (latest version) only shows three alternative glyphs for capital letter Eng (in Junicode), not the Runic ones, but then fails to show any if Alternates for Selection is selected. And it only shows three named Stylistic Sets for the whole font. So I cannot say that my confusion has remarkably diminished.

SVG files are text file - open it and look. It appears the font family is Open Sans, and it is probably the Regular (so select just that). The original Open Sans Regular font only has "Open Sans" in the PostScript Name. No Regular weight is listed. So perhaps that is where it came from. This happens quite a bit when Affinity opens other documents (no Font Style). So just select the text and apply the Regular weight (Font Style). Note the Regular weight in the original Open Sans does not match the Regular weight in the current Google Fonts version (they adjusted some of the weights when they made the variable font). So your original document may not look the same with the newer fonts. You may want to use the original fonts if you need to replicate something.

Nice. Thanks for the links. This may be a redundant question, but is there no way of taking a variable font and turning it into a static font via third party software? It's a shame that Affinity Publisher aims itself at a marketplace that forces the user to have to pay for fonts, rather than be able to use Google Free fonts. I had to pay for Microsoft Word today. So my £60 purchase of Affinity Publisher has now cost me £126. It would cost me potentially thousands more for a decent set of fonts for commercial publication.

Yeah, I miss that effect a lot, but I'd prefer it to be more of a non-destructive vector effect (sort of a mix between the contour tool and layer FX) so that you could always go back and edit the effect as and when needed. Also see 'pucker, bloat, splatter, block shadow, offset, etc'. Roughen also isn't an effect that should be limited to the pencil tool, as using it with paths/curves/shapes drawn with the pen tool, shapes and fonts would also be desirable.

We're aware of an issue in V2.2 and above that will cause text, using a PostScript (Type 1) font, to be converted to curves when exported to PDF. This is currently logged with our developers but a workaround would be to use a similar or alternative non-PostScript (Type 1) font for the affected text elements. We're sorry for any inconvenience this might cause.

Accordingly, shouldn't that be in the Feedback forum as it is not for this beta? In any case, since these fonts are constructed by center-line strokes, when this is done, please consider leveraging that fact by allowing brushes to be applied to them (for those not doing CNC work, anyway...).

Thanks for replying @Ash Btw there is currently partial support for single stroke fonts, except some characters don’t render, so hopefully it wouldn’t be a huge deal for the devs to slip it into an upcoming beta…

Did the correct fonts end up in the package? The Package Fonts list only shows the family name, not the styles. So it appears to be confused about the names at some point. Confused when putting the fonts into the package? or Confused when trying to get the fonts from the package? The GT America super-family has a particular names/weights/styles configuration that may be confusing Affinity. One of the old Bebas Neue families has a similar structure and it has been the source of some other fonts confusion issues. And it only has five fonts, not 84. What are the six fonts/styles you actually used? Maybe I can try it here. Do you have all 84 fonts installed on the source machine?

Following the release of iPadOS 17, our team have identified an issue whereby scrolling the fonts list in Affinity applications is no longer smooth and can react in a delayed manner. This appears to occur once a certain number of fonts has been installed in the Affinity apps, which varies based on iPad model and font type, but is around 70 fonts plus and is caused due to changes in how iPadOS handles installed fonts. Our team is aware of this issue and we're working to resolve this as soon as possible. Unfortunately the only workaround we're aware of at this time is to remove excess installed fonts and you should find that the list behaviour returns to normal. Our sincerest apologies for any inconveniences caused due to this.

@JulieR Once the app is open, can you see documents on the Live Docs screen? If you can I recommend tapping the icon for each document and saving them first. Once saved, swipe up to return to OS, then swipe up again and make sure the app is fully closed. Now tap the app icon, when you see the splash screen, double tap to open the Clear User Data options and tap Reset and when prompted tap OK. Does the app now open quicker? If not do you have a lot of fonts installed within the app at all? If you start a new document and try Placing an image, are you selecting from Files or Photos? Can you now see them to select? If not can you please do a screen recording showing this workflow.