Variable Technology
Never-ending possibilities, variable font technology gives you creative freedom to explore design like never before. This lightweight software contains an entire family in one single file. Making it easy to manage and a pleasure to work with.
We are always looking to the future and are aware of the web challenges we are facing and the importance of developing universally efficient, light weight type design software, combining performance and visual quality. The development of this new typographical software represents a major design and web development challenge and shift in the industry of type design. Combining design and technology, our quality variable fonts anticipate the shift in the use of this software evolution.
What is a Variable font?
A variable font is a single font file containing everything (styles, weights, widths) multi-platform compatible (desktop, print, web, apps…). A variable font is not designed like a standard font family. Unlike a traditional font that is composed of many styles, with different ranges in weights, like Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, and Black; with a range of different widths like Condensed, Ultra Condensed and Extended; and sometimes also includes Italics. Fundamentally a variable font is designed to store a whole range of styles in a single font file. That includes a complete font collection, all weights, widths, sometimes italics and other style variations are included as well.
All the styles in between
What makes variable fonts special is that they don’t simply contain all styles in one file, they also contain all the styles in between. Other distinctive characteristics of this variable font is its “design-space” and “Axes”. The design space defines the boundaries of the fonts and its playing field. Axes are the linear structures that give variable fonts it’s dynamic charm. By moving and adjusting these axis sliders they will allow you to change the font design structure.
Which means total creative freedom, for example a designer can adjust and play with the axe’s sliders of the font until they’ve found their desired weight. Thus, giving the designer a great tool that will allow them to find the precise aesthetic they are looking for in a font. This also means you have the design freedom to fit the font to your design and not the other way around. With a viable font you have more control at your fingertips. When working on a text layout. With the help of the sliders you have the capability to set the font to the exact weight, width, contrast or slant. Creatively speaking, this is something to be really excited about. For example; if you’re working on a branding project the features found in a variable font will allow you to use the exact same font all throughout the brand, for body text, decorative text and logo, this textual consistency throughout the brand will ensure a powerful visual identity that will help your customers quickly identify your brand.
Optimum legibility
Another feature of variable fonts is its adaptability to screen devices, on virtually any screen size, which means optimum legibility, brand consistency and user experience all around. Another convenient feature is you will only need to load one font file to your website, regardless of how many different ways you’re using the variable font. In short, this new compact font technology holds many advantages in a small, creative package.
Compatibility of the Variable format
Because Variable is a new technology, it requires substantial updates to font handling infrastructure in operating systems and/or applications, and has very limited backwards compatibility.
Variable fonts do not yet adapt for print. The variable format is already working on recent browsers. For your printed projects, the OTF files are automatically included in every purchase. The OTF format fonts can be used as standard print files.