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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.

You haven’t heard the story before, because it is absolutely untrue. First, Adobe stopped making new fonts in Type 1 format very early in their switch to OpenType. Before they even shipped their first retail OpenType fonts in the year 2000. That included Type 1 MM fonts. Originally Adobe intended to have and ship OpenType Multiple Master fonts among their first OpenType fonts. The format was fully spec’d and fonts were being developed. Dan Mills at Adobe decided to drop the MM part for two reasons: 1) Microsoft had zero interest in MM OpenType at the time, and was proving a reluctant partner on that part of things. But that was not the same as pressure, and there was no quid pro quo that I ever heard at the time. 2) OpenType layout features and the rest of it was a hard enough sell without the MM part at the same time. Dan was concerned OpenType might not succeed if MM was bundled in there from the beginning. Some of us at Adobe were pretty unhappy when Dan told us (the type team) of his decision (in 1999 IIRC?). David Lemon and I talked about it at great length. But as much as we loved MM (and love variable fonts now) we were not convinced he was wrong. I believe I recall saying exactly that to David, and him agreeing, before we even left the room. I remember David Lemon and I talking about how maybe some day we could bring back MM in OpenType. It took 17 years, but it happened at ATypI in Warsaw in 2016. And that time around, Adobe (David), Microsoft (Greg), Apple (Ned) and Google (Behdad) all did it as a joint announcement—although Apple was coy about committing to support for the new stuff, as it was based fairly directly on the GX Variations tech, it seemed pretty clear they were down for it.

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.

How many fonts do you have? Is it hundreds or thousands? Be aware that Affinity cannot use Variable or Colour fonts. To the best of my knowledge fonts stored on the internet (or perhaps even any network) may not work with Affinity. Finally old PostScript type one fonts are a problem as well.

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.

Google Fonts are typically supplied in a set comprising variable font TTF files, a copy of the Open Font Licence, a Read Me file, and a subfolder containing static fonts. For Source Sans 3, the files are as follows: SourceSans3-VariableFont_wght.ttf SourceSans3-Italic-VariableFont_wght.ttf OFL.txt README.txt static [folder] The ‘static’ folder in this case contains 16 TTF files.

I would advise to use only the static fonts as these will be supported in the affinities and maybe other apps as well that do not support variable fonts. You can store the variable fonts for the future where it may be possible to use it in any and/or all apps.

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.

While we continue to wait for any sign of variable fonts in the Affinity apps from Serif, tools such as https://slice-gui.netlify.app/docs/ can be used to work around the problem (yes, another work-around) by creating static versions of variable fonts that can then be used in the Affinity apps. Annoying, time-consuming, and far from ideal, but if needs must, it’s an option.

Could it be that these fonts are variable fonts? Affinity does not support variable fonts and requires that you install the static variants for this font.

J3rry, In both weight and width, variable fonts allow you to control those values beyond the presets, so if you think the bold is to bold and the semibold too thin, you can set the weight somewhere in the middle. But variable fonts allow you to control more things, such as optical sizing, the length of serifs. Recursive Sans is a great example of what can be done: IT allows you to control weight, slant, "casualness" and "monospaceness"

You will never be able to move flawlessly from AI to the Affinity applications. Even if variable fonts were supportted, the format of the .ai files is undocumented (largely, if not completely), and Serif is not interested in trying to reverse engineer that format and then maintain compatibility with future changes. If you have documents that were saved by AI in compatibility mode, so they contain a PDF version of the AI data, then Affinity can partly show the contents, but not fully.

The Affinity programs cannot read certain proprietary data in the Adopay file formats; Serif would have to license an API from Adobe for this. And that three times (APhoto, ADesigner, APublisher). This means three license fees per suite sold. Try to open your files in https://www.photopea.com And as far as your variable font problem is concerned, check whether the fonts are also available in the static version.

Google Fonts fonttools instancer works well (Python). FontLab - open variable font, check the box to export named instances as fonts, push the button. You may want to do some renaming to prevent name conflicts with the variable font. So they can both be installed at the same time. The user in the discussion below used fonttools. Or PM me the font - it would take about 15 minutes with name fixes.

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.

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.

Like most here, I agree. +1 vote from me. I’ve seen so many variable fonts I want to buy licensing for but thankfully I checked if Affinity supports them or not before proceeding with the purchase. Variable font support needs to be there on both desktop and mobile platforms. It’s not like it’s an unavailable tool that I can find workarounds for. The use of these fonts can help in making our careers. For example, I find it quite unfortunate that I can’t use this beautiful variable font in any of my projects: https://www.nikolastype.com/fonts/solare/

Noto Sans Display static fonts are available here (in the old repo): https://github.com/notofonts/noto-fonts/tree/main/hinted/ttf/NotoSansDisplay and here: Noto_Sans_Display.(2022-06-30).zip Note: this repo/zip has all four static widths. Lora full release with static fonts (OTF+TTF) is available here: https://github.com/cyrealtype/Lora-Cyrillic/releases/tag/v3.005 and here: Lora-v3.005.(2023-01-16).release.zip Sure sign of a variable font (one that may not be configured properly).

Just do a web search on "variable fonts" if you do not know what they are. For instance, one of the hits will be https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/introducing_type/introducing_variable_fonts, which explains how they differ from regular fonts.

Hi @Alexeir and welcome to the forums. This is a variable Font. Variable Fonts are not supported yet by Affinity programmes. If needed, install the static version of these font.

There are plenty of free fonts (not variable) from Google Fonts, and elsewhere, you don’t need to spend lots of money!