4 ms·

I think variable fonts are really neat—but I'm curious to know what professional typographers think about them. Take Concourse [1] by Matthew Butterick for exam

I think variable fonts are really neat—but I'm curious to know what professional typographers think about them. Take Concourse [1] by Matthew Butterick for example—if you click on the "PDF" link at the top, you'll get a PDF sample of the Concourse font, and on page 7 Butterick talks about how the font has been carefully duplexed so that different weights always take up the same amount of space. With a variable-width font, presumably you'd be able to adjust the tracking as well as the weight to make them match, but maybe not? And maybe not automatically? I dunno. Do any professional typographers have opinions on the pros/cons of variable fonts? [1]: https://mbtype.com/fonts/concourse/sample.html https://mbtype.com/fonts/concourse/sample.html

redsoundbanner 3y ago
[flagged]
- somedude895 3y ago
  If you're actually interested, I recommend watching Helvetica (2007). Some of the interviewees' enthusiasm is really contagious. I was only able to find it available to watch through certain sites found through Yandex btw. https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica
- chefandy 3y ago
  Many professional typographers exist. Sometimes I am one. Most published type needs to be professionally typeset. The difference between a typical word document and a professional-quality document is far less about the software than it is about the person operating it— there’s a lot of nuance to doing it well. Many folks in the engineering trades tend to see it (and many other types of visual design) as quaint or frivolous, but having really tight typesetting is still very important for many applications. I know because at least half of my clients for that sort of work come to me, exasperated, after struggling to get something from consumer-focused automated tools or premade templates that’s even sorta polished without being totally generic. There are also type designers who design typefaces. Most people have no reason to like, but check out how many type foundries there are and how much professional fonts cost. Making a good font is incredibly labor intensive.
  - sbuk 3y ago
    Can't reply to the GP as they are (rightly) flagged, but this engineering mindset that anything which adds elegance or beauty is frivilous really limits the ability of an 'engineer'. Look at the works of the great 19th century engineers like Watt and Brunel, or for more recent examples, the work or Cecil Balmond. There no reason why the elegance of the solution employed in these examples of civil and structural engineering shouldn't translate to software 'engineering'. In fact, take a leaf out of industrial designers book; solve problems as elegantly as possible. Thinking of typographers as 'layout engineers' may help...
    - chefandy 3y ago
      It also really limits the ability of a lot of software. Design, including user interface design, is a communication medium— not even primarily aesthetics. I don’t blame people for not seeing the depth and complexity in fields they’re not in, but as someone that’s worked professionally as a (back-end) developer even longer than i have as a designer, I’m still perplexed by dev culture’s open disdain for design fields. I’ve spent many thousands of hours of my life contributing to FOSS projects, but not as a designer, because most are weirdly hostile to it. The FOSS movement could have so much more impact on the world if we addressed the fact that inscrutable dev-created UIs are unusable to people without a working mental model of software development. The big user-facing FOSS projects like blender and Firefox are foundation or corporation backed with professional designers. I’m comfortable with layout not being engineering— the processes are quite different. What annoys me is that so many in engineering look down on it because of that.
lights0123 3y ago
Take a look at the GRAD parameter under Roboto Flex on the post's page—it seems to do what you're talking about.
_pbear 3y ago
H&FJ's (as it was at the time) Mercury was designed to keep the same spacing in different weights to handle the physical needs of printing a newspaper in different locations and conditions, see the design notes on the typeface [1]. That's the first time I remember this quality being touted in a font (among their set published weights, you couldn't vary it minutely, say, to get a bold-semibold). While you can try to adjust tracking to make one weight of a face match the spacing of another, the faces are probably individually adjusted to make their own default spacing coherent within the face. It may be different enough between just two faces to sometimes not work, and even less across the entire range. Adobe Acrobat used a version of Myriad and Minion as under-the-hood variable font substitution to make every PDF readable at least even if you didn't have the original typeface. The promise was you would never see Courier again. Multiple Master fonts made available this idea where you could generate specific typefaces along different axes for your design needs, but it wasn't a live thing, and you ended up with lots of discrete font files. My recollection of Multiple Master was that everyone hated them and were glad to see them die. Maybe the automated adjusting of parameters makes the implementation palatable now. [1]: https://www.typography.com/fonts/mercury-text/design-notes https://www.typography.com/fonts/mercury-text/design-notes

redsoundbanner 3y ago

[flagged]

somedude895 3y ago
If you're actually interested, I recommend watching Helvetica (2007). Some of the interviewees' enthusiasm is really contagious. I was only able to find it available to watch through certain sites found through Yandex btw. https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica
chefandy 3y ago
Many professional typographers exist. Sometimes I am one. Most published type needs to be professionally typeset. The difference between a typical word document and a professional-quality document is far less about the software than it is about the person operating it— there’s a lot of nuance to doing it well. Many folks in the engineering trades tend to see it (and many other types of visual design) as quaint or frivolous, but having really tight typesetting is still very important for many applications. I know because at least half of my clients for that sort of work come to me, exasperated, after struggling to get something from consumer-focused automated tools or premade templates that’s even sorta polished without being totally generic. There are also type designers who design typefaces. Most people have no reason to like, but check out how many type foundries there are and how much professional fonts cost. Making a good font is incredibly labor intensive.
- sbuk 3y ago
  Can't reply to the GP as they are (rightly) flagged, but this engineering mindset that anything which adds elegance or beauty is frivilous really limits the ability of an 'engineer'. Look at the works of the great 19th century engineers like Watt and Brunel, or for more recent examples, the work or Cecil Balmond. There no reason why the elegance of the solution employed in these examples of civil and structural engineering shouldn't translate to software 'engineering'. In fact, take a leaf out of industrial designers book; solve problems as elegantly as possible. Thinking of typographers as 'layout engineers' may help...
  - chefandy 3y ago
    It also really limits the ability of a lot of software. Design, including user interface design, is a communication medium— not even primarily aesthetics. I don’t blame people for not seeing the depth and complexity in fields they’re not in, but as someone that’s worked professionally as a (back-end) developer even longer than i have as a designer, I’m still perplexed by dev culture’s open disdain for design fields. I’ve spent many thousands of hours of my life contributing to FOSS projects, but not as a designer, because most are weirdly hostile to it. The FOSS movement could have so much more impact on the world if we addressed the fact that inscrutable dev-created UIs are unusable to people without a working mental model of software development. The big user-facing FOSS projects like blender and Firefox are foundation or corporation backed with professional designers. I’m comfortable with layout not being engineering— the processes are quite different. What annoys me is that so many in engineering look down on it because of that.

lights0123 3y ago

Take a look at the GRAD parameter under Roboto Flex on the post's page—it seems to do what you're talking about.

_pbear 3y ago

H&FJ's (as it was at the time) Mercury was designed to keep the same spacing in different weights to handle the physical needs of printing a newspaper in different locations and conditions, see the design notes on the typeface [1]. That's the first time I remember this quality being touted in a font (among their set published weights, you couldn't vary it minutely, say, to get a bold-semibold). While you can try to adjust tracking to make one weight of a face match the spacing of another, the faces are probably individually adjusted to make their own default spacing coherent within the face. It may be different enough between just two faces to sometimes not work, and even less across the entire range. Adobe Acrobat used a version of Myriad and Minion as under-the-hood variable font substitution to make every PDF readable at least even if you didn't have the original typeface. The promise was you would never see Courier again. Multiple Master fonts made available this idea where you could generate specific typefaces along different axes for your design needs, but it wasn't a live thing, and you ended up with lots of discrete font files. My recollection of Multiple Master was that everyone hated them and were glad to see them die. Maybe the automated adjusting of parameters makes the implementation palatable now. [1]: https://www.typography.com/fonts/mercury-text/design-notes https://www.typography.com/fonts/mercury-text/design-notes