Have you heard of variable fonts? Imagine a font management software that allows you to adjust variable axes and preview the effects of variable fonts in real time. Sounds amazing, right? 

That's exactly what we've introduced in our latest feature update in June—variable font functionality. In this article, I'll explain what variable fonts are and how to use them in Fontapp.

Why Do We Need Variable Fonts?

In traditional font design, a single font file usually represents only one style. Over time, we derived "font families" with variations in weight, width, and italics. However, this led to another problem—font families often have more than seven or eight variants from Light to Black. Do we have to download and install all of them? It's too cumbersome.

So, can we combine these families into one file and use font variants by specifying a dimension? Or even have more flexible options between the predefined weights of a font family? This is where variable fonts come into play.

What Exactly Are Variable Fonts?

The concept of variable fonts was introduced by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe at the 2016 "ATypI" conference. They aimed to address the flexibility and performance issues in font design and typography.

These tech companies are actively promoting this technology. Since its introduction, browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, Adobe's software, and Google Fonts have started supporting variable fonts. This technology has now become widespread in the design field.

"Variable" refers to certain attributes of a font that can change within a continuous range. Common variable axes include weight, width, italics, and font size. Of course, to use variable font axes, designers must create a variable version of the font.

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How to Use the Variable Font Feature in Fontapp?

Let's illustrate with a dynamic image for clarity, using Roboto, one of the most popular fonts on Google Fonts, as an example.

If you want to preview Roboto's variable effects without downloading the Roboto font file, you can find the font marked with "variable" in Fontapp and click on it.

You will see Roboto's variable axes appear on the right side of the software interface. Roboto has many variable axes, and you can use your mouse to drag the sliders on these axes to preview the variable effects in real time until it looks just the way you want.

This way, you can know the variable axis parameters you need before officially using the font, ensuring quick setup during design, improving efficiency, and reducing the performance load on design software.

Conclusion

In summary, variable fonts eliminate the hassle of downloading multiple family variants of the same font. They allow more flexible adjustments from the basic font settings, letting you customize the font to your liking. This is a design technology trend you must pay attention to in recent years.

Fontapp might be the first font management software to implement a variable font preview feature. We will continue to add more font-related features in the future and sincerely hope to receive feedback and suggestions from our users!

Use Free Fonts Now

If you want to use Free Google Fonts instantly, download FontApp now!

With FontApp, you can access Google Fonts with just one click, without downloading or installing them. In addition to over 6000 Google Fonts, FontApp includes hundreds of other free fonts that you can easily search, filter, and use in software like PS, AI, Sketch, and more.

If you found this article helpful, consider bookmarking the FontApp website for more on font trends and typography applications.Free Download

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