Variable Fonts

[LLB]

How does Affinity Publisher deal with variable fonts? Are there any plans to integrate related features?

[Dave Harris]

I'm afraid we just treat variable fonts as normal fonts. I doubt this will change for some time.

[michacassola]

More than a year has passed, Google Fonts now supports variable fonts. It is time Serif team @Dave Harris.

[garrettm30]

Now that Google Font's new interface allows one to filter to show only variable fonts, we may now be at the beginning of where variable fonts start to gain critical mass. In fact, browser support is now just shy of 90% of worldwide users, according to https://caniuse.com/#feat=variable-fonts.

I'm not quite ready yet to start using them in my web design, but we are a lot closer than I realized. As for layout work, where, unlike web design, I do not need to be concerned of the software support of what other people are using, I suspect I would use them rather heavily in Publisher if it were possible. It certainly is an exciting possibility.

[jqgill]

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.

[cooltrooper]

Bump!  

[tersmuse]

I have Helvetica Now Variable, am sad I can't use it. Make an effort

[Robert Zhao]

Affinity can use these opentype features, great.

BUT YOU CAN'T EVEN CHANGE THE FONT WEIGHT WHILE HAVING FUN WITH THESE OPENTYPE FEATURE. EXCELLENT.

[ShadowHawk]

Variable fonts are being included in my new project's base design. I'll need to use Adobe's applications until Affinity supports the newer font tech. I'd rather not.

[Bartd]

Dear people at Affinity, this has been asked for for a long time. Please enlighten us: how much longer will we have to wait?

[jamessouttar]

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.

[Wosven]

25 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Can you explain to me why this is so important?

In the futur, old fonts won't be compatible with new OS.

You can buy a whole family font if, like me, you'd rather use one with more than regular, italic, bold and bold-italic... but buying new fonts and licences for each computer have a cost. Why not, for the same price for this font, not get the variable ones?

You'll have the classical settings, but if you find the condensed one "too condensed", you'll be able to modify it. Without needing to install 90 fonts, but only 1 file.
You want the same "feeling" while reading the print version and the web site, but the settings in the web site need the font to be a little bit larger to better legibility? It'll be easy with the variable font, and people won't notice unless they compare screen and paper (but from experience, not everyone will notice).

 

Another problem: imagine you're working in a team, and this magazine's template original text styles use more than regular and italic for a font. But the archive/package you were given only contain regular and italic of the main font since the document didn't used all the text styles available. You'll have to ask for the needed fonts, or install them or use a third party app for this if you don't use variable fonts, if you need to use text styles with different specificities.
If the package contains a variable font, no problem.

 

Have you ever use a service like Typekit? I tend to only install the specific font and variants I need, to avoid cluttering my computer. But sometimes  I end up needing more variants, or need to select another font if the one I choose first miss them. I wouldn't have this problem with variable fonts.

For now, old fonts are compatible with our systems, but the day we'll have to buy new versions of our fonts, or use services like Typekit/Monotype fonts, it's best to search what are the best options.

 

And on a personal point of view, I read about variable fonts in the 90' when I was a student, and having them existing now, 30 years later is a dream come true! 🤩 (at the time, we were also switching from a technology to another one... it also take nearly a decade and new OS.)

[Wosven]

9 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I am sure that somebody will make a converter. I imagine they already exist.

But licences specifie you can't modify the files provided. That's why in a professional environment you'll avoid this, if your work go beyond the local area, and you need a lot of licences.

[J. Lauerbach]

I just started to test Affinity Designer and realized that i can't use my companies font because it's a variable font.
I'm afraid we'll have to stick to Adobe in stead of buying Affinity's Designer, Publisher and Photo.

The first post i found that asked for variable fonts was from august 2018, so i'm afraid we'll never see this in Affinity.
What a pitty.

[fde101]

On 10/17/2021 at 7:48 AM, LondonSquirrel said:

I am curious what all the fuss is about with variable fonts

If the only thing people are adjusting is the font weight and possibly slant, then their primary advantage is in the web domain: if your site calls for a specific font to be downloaded, without this feature, you download a light version of the font, a normal-weight version of the font, a bold version of the font, an italic version of the font...  that chews up bandwidth and thus slows down the page load time, plus can be a problem for people on metered connections (where they might pay by the byte).  With a variable font, you download one font and have all of them, so it can reduce page load times (resulting in a faster site) and reduce the burden on those with limited download capacity.

For print, it can save disk space, but beyond that it allows for finer control of the parameters it offers.

However, the technology can allow the fonts to be customized in ways other than just weight and slant if the font is designed to allow for it.  The problem right now is that there are few apps taking them seriously enough for the font vendors to put much effort into offering other parameters that could have provided a much more rich set of ways to customize the shape of the fonts.  Currently the focus seems to be on weight and slant - but more would be possible if the technology were actually being taken seriously outside of its primary benefits for the web.

 

Here is a site with demos of a number of such fonts: https://v-fonts.com

A few of the fonts offer a "width" option to create narrow/wide flavorings.

At least one of them (Belarius Var) has an option to control serifs, allowing one font to morph between being a serif font and being a sans-serif font.

Another (Whirly Birdie & Whirlybats) has an "Animation" parameter that you can drag back and forth to animate the characters of the font (not useful for that purpose in print, but still shows some creativity and demonstrates that there is potential to do a lot more with this technology than most people currently seem to realize).

There are one or two others with some creative parameters as well.

[RickyO]

On 10/17/2021 at 8:35 AM, LondonSquirrel said:

Thanks @Wosven for your explanation. I should have been more clear: I know what a variable font is, and I see their use. I have not personally used them, so am curious what the fuss is about them.

I am sure that somebody will make a converter. I imagine they already exist.

I don't think your 'imagination' is quite accurate.  I have not seen any 'converters'.  Probably because the technologies are very different.  Better to stay with one technology, best if you use the currently most useful.

[RickyO]

Serif,  Could you please adopt variable fonts?

[RickyO]

On 10/28/2021 at 6:10 AM, LondonSquirrel said:

I think this is where my 'curiosity' has come from. I've seen a few examples of altered weight and slant and sort of said to myself: And? So?

Sure, altering weight and slant can be useful. And custom fonts can be interesting. But I was a bit underwhelmed with what I saw. Perhaps if I saw something really impressive with variable fonts that could not reasonably be replicated in many cases using 'ordinary' fonts I would change my opinion. 

To be clear, I am not saying variable fonts are not useful. No doubt other people who have spent a bit more time with them have opinions which are worth more than mine.

I don't see that being a problem these days. Meanwhile Affinity, for example, installs universal binaries which waste gigs of space. That's worth a few thousands of fonts. 😁

Review: 

 

[Guest]

Unfortunately it’s not as simply as converting a JPG to a TIFF. You can’t export/convert the variations within a variable font to new fonts (otf, ttf) without the original source files (ufo, glyphs, etc).

[User_783649]

Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, CoreDRAW, Sketch. They all have support of variable fonts. While XD and Figma (and Affinity) still lacking support for it. 

More and more type foundries are releasing their typefaces in variable format now in addition to usual family sets these days.

From the web development point of view, utilizing the only one font file in css and tweaking its axes could be more convenient than handling a bunch of different weights. Also, less resources to request from server. However, variable font files a bit more heavy than usual single weight as they contain more data. So, there are things to consider.

From pure organizational point of view, it might be more comfortable for someone to have just one font file installed locally, which actually covers the whole family.

For type foundries, sometimes it could also be more convenient to just have one main master curve set in a working file, rather than tweaking and applying changes to individual weights across multiple working files. Unification, standardization, linearization and simplification of the process.

But the truth is, that almost every type foundry will raise the prices significantly when they all will decide to provide variable fonts only. So customers will no longer have control over how many individual weights they want to purchase. Either you pay full price or you wouldn't get it at all. Most of the times you don't need the whole family of 20+ styles but 2 or 4 styles only.

So, of course, it would be great to see variable fonts support in Affinity suite.

But I'm totally fine without it for now, as long as I can still purchase individual weights from type foundries.

[kenmcd]

19 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Unfortunately it’s not as simply as converting a JPG to a TIFF. You can’t export/convert the variations within a variable font to new fonts (otf, ttf) without the original source files (ufo, glyphs, etc).

Sure you can. You can export the pre-defined instances or create your own custom instances.

There are FOSS tools to do this such as Slice - https://github.com/source-foundry/Slice

And online tools such as Samsa - https://lorp.github.io/samsa/src/samsa-gui.html

You can also open a variable font in FontLab or FontCreator and do the same.

[User_783649]

15 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

For your convenience we no longer sell separate Roman and Bold SemiBold and UltraBold etc versions of abc font, instead we provide a single variable font which you can tweak in a million different ways. All in one file for the amazing price of 2 * whatevertheoldpricewas.

Exactly. That what I'm worrying about. And even if it may seem cool and amazing right now for some people, in a longer perspective that is a dangerous route.

[RickyO]

4 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I accept all the points in your post. But I still haven't seen any really amazing 'gee I must have that' examples of variable fonts. I can see they are useful. Maybe they are more useful in web development, which I don't really do.

But here it comes... For your convenience we no longer sell separate Roman and Bold SemiBold and UltraBold etc versions of abc font, instead we provide a single variable font which you can tweak in a million different ways. All in one file for the amazing price of 2 * whatevertheoldpricewas. Shiny gold star: It's a £$€500 value!!!

Fine.  Then don't worry about it any longer.  Sounds like the point is moot for you.  Moving on.

[RickyO]

5 hours ago, Alex M said:

Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, CoreDRAW, Sketch. They all have support of variable fonts. While XD and Figma (and Affinity) still lacking support for it. 

More and more type foundries are releasing their typefaces in variable format now in addition to usual family sets these days.

From the web development point of view, utilizing the only one font file in css and tweaking its axes could be more convenient than handling a bunch of different weights. Also, less resources to request from server. However, variable font files a bit more heavy than usual single weight as they contain more data. So, there are things to consider.

From pure organizational point of view, it might be more comfortable for someone to have just one font file installed locally, which actually covers the whole family.

For type foundries, sometimes it could also be more convenient to just have one main master curve set in a working file, rather than tweaking and applying changes to individual weights across multiple working files. Unification, standardization, linearization and simplification of the process.

But the truth is, that almost every type foundry will raise the prices significantly when they all will decide to provide variable fonts only. So customers will no longer have control over how many individual weights they want to purchase. Either you pay full price or you wouldn't get it at all. Most of the times you don't need the whole family of 20+ styles but 2 or 4 styles only.

So, of course, it would be great to see variable fonts support in Affinity suite.

But I'm totally fine without it for now, as long as I can still purchase individual weights from type foundries.

Thanks!  Excellent explanation.  Appreciated.

[Alfred]

7 hours ago, Alex M said:

But the truth is, that almost every type foundry will raise the prices significantly when they all will decide to provide variable fonts only. So customers will no longer have control over how many individual weights they want to purchase. Either you pay full price or you wouldn't get it at all. Most of the times you don't need the whole family of 20+ styles but 2 or 4 styles only.

The truth is, the pricing for most families of static fonts is structured so that the price of the whole family isn’t much more than the price of three or four individual styles.