Variable Fonts: Full Circle 1991–2017
summary
History and tech explained with concrete claims: the 1990s Multiple Master and GX Variations are predecessors and Variable Fonts (OpenType Variations) is a superset that four big vendors now back; implementations land in browsers and OSes and current demos compress large families (examples claim up to ~70% savings but “it depends”), convert huge families (Kepler’s 168 fonts into a couple of variable files), support arbitrary axes (practical limit 65,536) and allow discontinuities and glyph swaps — and working pre‑release browser/OS support already exists.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Start
- 4:262-axis font
- 9:00Multiple Master fonts
- 10:52Fates of GX & MM
- 16:18Timeline
- 25:43Variable Fonts
- 27:03What do we see?
- 29:52CSS 3
- 30:22CSS 4 (? in progress)
- 33:52Articles/Resources
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