Variable Fonts: An Introduction

Carl Shank • December 9, 2025

Variable Fonts: An Introduction

History & Use

“Variable fonts are a single font file that behaves like multiple fonts.” (John Hudson) The technology behind variable fonts has been around for a while. Starting in the 1990s, interpolation and extrapolation have been used to create different masters, and weights in typefaces. For example, by designing a regular and bold weight a semibold could be interpolated from the two masters. 



Apple Computer, in its development of the Macintosh computer in the early 80’s, also introduced the Apple LaserWriter™ and the LaserWriter Plus. Using a new technology

called “Postscript,” licensed from Adobe Systems, a built-in font description language in the Laser-Writer’s ROM (read-only memory) converted screen fonts on the computer screen, through a mathematical process, to 300 dpi (dots-per-inch) output. (Exciting at the time!)


Users wanted, and soon got, true WYSIWYG (pronounced wizzywig— what-you-see-is-what-you get) operating environments. With the advent of Adobe’s ATM (Adobe

Type Manager™), and Apple’s TrueType fonts, the on screen font “jaggies” were replaced by the outline representation of the font, so that the screen faithfully represented the final printed output. Fonts could be “downloaded” per job to the Postscript printer, even if the printer did not have the specified fonts inherent in its ROM files. 

QuickDraw

“QuickDraw” gave the added advantage of producing laser-like output even from a nonPostscript printer. With QuickDraw, the font outlines are processed by the computer and sent to the printer for output. Software packages now skew, bend, shrink, condense, expand, rotate and manipulate typeforms. Apple’s System 7.x and Windows 3.1x included several TrueType fonts that were installed with the system software.


Basic QuickDraw was designed for the earliest Mac models with their built-in black-and-white screens and was seen on systems such as the Macintosh Classic and Powerbook 100 computers. Color QuickDraw was introduced with the first Macintosh II systems, supporting up to 256 colors. 32-Bit Color QuickDraw was part of Mac System 7 and supported up to millions of colors.


QuickDrawGX added various curve-drawing commands and introduced TrueType as its basic font system. “The ability to do kerning, tracking, and justification, as well as ligatures and ornamental forms of various characters, is provided by the line layout routines, supported by the QuickDraw GX smart font format. The line layout routines work with the typographic information contained in the TrueType GX and Type 1 GX fonts to give you a ton of control over how text is placed on a page. Because QuickDraw GX typography is fully integrated with graphics, you can rotate, skew, and change the perspective of typographic shapes the same way you can geometric shapes. You can use the text shape to draw a line of text with one style. The glyph shape enables you to draw text in several styles and graphically manipulate each glyph.” (Getting Started With Quickdraw, Sep 1993)


When you click OK in a Print Dialogue box on your computer, the application for text specifies font, size, style and so forth. For graphic objects, the application specifies the shape, size, line weight, fill pattern, and other attributes. QuickDraw prepares a script of actions necessary to draw the whole page and is generic enough to work with any type of printer. For the LaserWriter, the driver translates the QuickDraw script into a Postscript program and sends that to the printer.


While many of its component features live on in the current Macintosh environment as OpenType Variable Fonts, GX itself was formally “killed” with the purchase of the NeXT system and the adoption of the Quartz imaging model in Mac OS X. GX proved too large, with its API (Application Programming Interface) demanding several books, and required speeds not available on the classic Mac 68000-based platforms, like the Mac Plus.


Multiple Masters Fonts

Multiple master fonts (or MM fonts) are an extension to Adobe Systems Type 1 PostScript fonts. Multiple master fonts contain two or more “masters,” that is, original font styles, and allow a user to interpolate between these masters along a range of continuous “axes.” Custom styles can then be generated from a single font file programmatically.


Most MM fonts support one or two (sometimes three) of the following variables — Weight (wt), Width (wd), Optical size (op) and sometimes Style. Width allows the character width to be extended or compressed. While other software allows for shrinking or widening type, the results from a multiple master font are superior. Vertical strokes in enlarging or reducing characters tend to be proportionally thicker or slimmer, giving an uneven appearance. MM fonts with a width axis are designed to scale appropriately.


Weight allows the character weight to be modified, typically from light or thin, through regular, to extra bold. Optical size allows the character shape to be modified based on how large it will appear to the reader. At small sizes, small details such as serifs and thin lines such as stems are typically bolder. The "x-height" (the height of a lower case "x") is also a larger proportion of the total font height, and the characters may be extended slightly. These changes are designed to make small type easier to read. 



Style, the least used of the multiple master axes, allows any other font property to be continuously modified. One such example is changing the serif style from wedge (triangular) to slab (rectangular).


This technology failed for at least two reasons. First, users were forced to generate “instances” for each font variation, littering their hard drives with font bearing names, like MinioMMIt_519 wt 539 wd 42 op. This code was for the Minion Italic font with a weight of 519, a width of 539 and an optical size of 42. 


The second reason for the MM discontinuance is that most font designers have generally preferred to release fonts in specific, individually fine-tuned weights and styles. Thus, the current Open Type Minion Pro font has 64 variations carefully crafted to suit most any typographic need and context.



Current application support for MM fonts is sparse. However, font design tools such as FontLab and FontForge can edit MM fonts, and can export them into other font formats as needed. Adobe Type Manager (ATM) is required for MM support on Windows and the "Classic" Mac OS (9 and below).


A technical note concerns a key question on which sizes to interpolate to. “In the Thesis typeface developed by Lucas de Groot (See BLOG Post Advances in Typography: Late Twentieth to Twenty-First Centuries A Historical Sketch (Part 3) December 1, 2025), de Groot's choice of weights to release was developed using an "interpolation theory". The optical interpolation b, in the three stems a (thinnest), b (interpolation) and c (thickest), is set to the geometric mean of a and c, i.e. b² = ac (as opposed to the linear arithmetic mean).” (Wikipedia) Popular MM Fonts — ITC Garamond MM, Minion MM, Myriad MM, Adobe Jenson MM.


Open Type Variable Fonts

Open Type Variable fonts build directly on the technology introduced to TrueType by Apple in the QuickDraw GX graphics environment. Of similar vintage, Adobe’s multiple master format approached similar concepts in a different way. How do we know that Variable Fonts don’t also have a declining future? The need for more compact dynamic webfonts is part of the answer. “Variable fonts also have the potential to enable new kinds of typography for electronic documents, responsive to things like device orientation or even viewing distance. Compact and faster fonts also provide significant advantages for embedding fonts in devices, especially for East Asian (CJK) and other fonts with very large glyph sets and character coverage. The smaller device and disc footprint of variable fonts has been a major factor in encouraging support for the technology in software companies.” (https://medium.com/variable-fonts)


An Open Type Variable font contains one or more axes that each provide particular variation between different extremes of a typeface design. The format also allows for the possibility of intermediate designs, for the whole glyph set or for individual glyphs, to provide finer control over the design as it changes across the variations design space.


Unlike MM fonts, an Open Type Variable font contains only a single set of glyph outlines “and the other extremes or intermediate shapes are defined as deltas from those outlines. So, for example, a font may contain a set of glyph outlines that correspond to the regular weight and width of a typeface, and the lighter, heavier, narrower, and extended designs will be expressed in the font data as movements of outline nodes relative to that outline.” (Medium.com) Any position within the design space can be a named instance. 

This is a sample of using a Variable Font in Adobe InDesign. Note the Width and Weight axes. (For Demo purposes only)

An Example. A client wants you to professionally typeset the following paragraph — "Aleka, the Norwegian dog, pal to Cinthia, is 2 3/9 years old. She has been adopted from a rescue center in Norway, badly treated, bruised and emotionally distraught. Cinthia nursed her back to life with the joys of being loved in her living. This dog travels everywhere with her owner." Her requirements are as follows — Use justified Minion type in a block 18 picas wide by 11 picas deep and in 14 point on automatic leading at 16.8 point. She wants you to use real fractions. The block must be easy to read and pleasing to the eye.


The draft below gives some options a professional typographer or printer might use. Notice in Example 1 all of the text required does not fit and the spacing between words is too extended. The fraction is okay using Minion Open Type Pro. Example 2 uses Minion Variable font. Note the darker type, thus easier to read, and the word spacing is pleasing to the eye. Example 3 goes back to Minion Pro but this time uses hyphenation. The problem is too many hyphens in this short block. Example 4 uses a Minion MM font with only one hyphen, but again the text is pleasing to the eye. Which one would you choose?

Two Variable Fonts highlighted in this piece are Roboto and Inter. A good place to see and experiment with variable fonts is AxisPraxis at https://www.axis-praxis.org/specimens/. Note the insert on the FFMeta Demo Variable Font.

 

Creating a Variable Open Font, using Glyph software, can be found at https://glyphsapp.com/learn/creating-a-variable-font


This is a sample Variable font, FF Meta Variable, noted in axis-praxis.org. Note the axes on the right of the paragraph.

Successful Layout & Design

Type Trends 2026 Analysis

By Carl Shank • October 13, 2026
Type Trends 2026 Analysis Tiffany Wardle, The Type Founders copy and design service editor, has offered her perspectives on the state of type in 2026 (SEE https://bit.ly/4s5fgNV ) She offers the summary that “no single style has defined 2026.” She, instead, offers that “variety” is the defining feature of 2026 — “traditional and unconventional approaches, maximalism beside restraint, and pairings without an obvious connection that still suit their context.” She notes that familiar or bookish type is found in unexpected roles and scales, that “expressive type is paired with pragmatic type, and that character-rich typefaces used as logotypes with broader use of variable fonts for creativity and performance.” Instead of the traditional typeface advice of carefully selecting faces that harmonize with one another, and the classic sans-serif headlines with serif text, she notes that type in 2026 emphasizes contradiction — “Contradiction gives much current typography its appeal. A bold, mannered display face can sit beside a practical sans serif; the two need no obvious formal connection. Their contrast creates energy. These ideas are not new. Typography has always adapted and recombined earlier approaches for new purposes. What matters now is the particular mix—and the wide range of methods that can feel contemporary at once.” The age-old sage advice, that I posted in 2021, notes this about how to use and combine typefaces — "Robert Bringhurst wisely says — “The best type for a book about bicycle racing will be, first of all, an inherently good type. Second, it will be a good type for books, which is to say, a good type for comfortable long-distance reading. Third, it will be a type sympathetic to the theme. It will probably be lean, strong and swift; perhaps it will also be Italian. But it is unlikely to be carrying excess ornament or freight, and unlikely to be indulging in a masquerade.” ( The Elements of Typographic Style , 91). Jan White echoes this sentiment about choosing type in How To Spec Type — “There is no such thing as 'right' or 'correct' use of type. There is only vivid and eloquent effectiveness, or numbing and misleading ineffectiveness.” (10) Consequently, a math textbook will use a different typeface than a slogan on a can of soda or a bottle of wine. White suggests the following questions for the would-be use of a typeface in any context — [1] Does the way the type is handled in a specific circumstance fulfill its purpose? [2] Is it doing the job efficiently? [3] Is the message coming through clearly and vividly? is the message jumping off the page into the reader's mind crispy and memorably? (10) He goes on to say that “good typography is transparent, like blister-packaging — exposing the content inside and letting it speak for itself.” He agrees with Bringhurst about the use of type ornaments — “too often typography is used like gift wrapping, in the hope that cosmetic prettification will make the package seem more desirable.” (10) So then, “good typography links the verbal with the visual to produce arresting results. Good typography clarifies. It articulates. It elucidates. It expresses meaning.” (11) Many would-be editors and writers and office personnel try too hard when it comes to setting type. With the thousands of possible typefaces that are on the market today, produced by would-be typographers, playing with digital type producing programs, many people can get overwhelmed and confused and frustrated by what typeface to use.”(SEE my blog “How To Choose the Right Type for the Right Job,” March 29, 2021, www.caretypography.com ) This age-old and wise advice has been supplanted, I would suggest, by a post-modern theoretical, indeed theological, cast. Like Dutch De Stijl (See Reference ), or Dadaism (See Reference ), or Psychedelic (See Reference ) or Punk (See Reference ), or Grunge type (See Reference ), the cultural context of rebellion against any typography rules of readability and legibility and well-defined type go out the window in favor of whatever gives “energy” to an ad or a poster or a book that wins the day. Wardle goes on to say about 2026 type combinations — “Unexpected roles. Bookish, text-oriented, or familiar type appears at surprising scales or in applications not usually associated with it. Contrasting character. Maximalist or highly expressive type sits beside pragmatic type, with the overall composition mattering more than obvious stylistic harmony.” She says these contrasts “invite closer attention to the content and reasoning behind each choice.” Post-modernism rejects absolutes and what I would call “common-sense” order and structure. Everyone makes up their own rules, their own agendas, their own type combinations, ignoring centuries of time-tested typography. This is what “feeling contemporary” means. If I am correct, then the 2026 typeface choices and patterns will likewise disappear from regular use. Using what has been called display type for “normal” use betrays one of White’s criticisms — “too often typography is used like gift wrapping, in the hope that cosmetic prettification will make the package seem more desirable.” What is important is what is on the inside of the package, not the audacious gift wrapping.  I would imagine that Wardle would point to White’s other typography notes that say “good typography links the verbal with the visual to produce arresting results. Good typography clarifies. It articulates. It elucidates. It expresses meaning.” She might point out the “energy” aspect of 2026 type choices and combinations and maintain that they accomplish the same thing as White suggests. I am not at all sure about that. Some of Fonts In Use samples below are what Wardle highlights (SEE https://fontsinuse.com ). You make the judgment call.

Typeface Characteristics: Which Type Where?

By Carl Shank • September 9, 2026
Typeface characteristics are the visual and structural features that distinguish one typeface from another. They determine a typeface’s historical appearance, readability, personality, and appropriate use. Useful Ways to Analyze Any Typeface. When examining an unfamiliar typeface, ask these questions in order (provided by ChatGPT) — Does it have serifs? What kind of serifs? How much thick/thin contrast is present? What is the stress angle? What is the x-height? How wide or narrow are the letters? How are the counters constructed? What do the terminals look like? What are distinctive letters such as a, g, e, R, and Q doing? How does the typeface behave in a paragraph—open, dark, dense, airy, mechanical, or calligraphic? What historical or technological process does its construction suggest? What personality does the combination of these characteristics produce? There are a number of online sources to help identify typefaces ( See Feb. 6, 2022 Blog for more explanation and use.) Sources include — MyFonts ( www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont ), FontSquirrel ( www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator ) WhtFontIs ( www.whatfontis.com ) Identifont ( www.identifont.com ) is one of the best. Here are the questions it will ask you — Does it have feet (serifs) or not (sans-serifs)? What style is the tail on uppercase Q? What style is the ampersand (the &)? Is the numeral “4” open or closed? What style of vertical line does the Dollar sign ($) have? How high is the center vertex of the uppercase M? Sit on the line or not? What type of bar does the uppercase G have? How far below the baseline does the uppercase J extend? What about the uppercase R? How far does the center bar extend? Is there a gap with the vertical part of the letter? Does it meet or cross the vertical? What about the question mark (?) What shape is the dot at the bottom? Is it circular, square, triangular, rectangular or even missing? The important point is that a typeface should not be identified by a single characteristic. Its identity comes from the interaction of serifs, contrast, stress, proportions, counters, terminals, spacing, and letterform construction.
Show More