net - UK (2020-02)

Interview

designs and advertising). Previously,

plugins had to be written to use them in

traditional design applications but

adoption is slowly changing here too: both

InDesign and Sketch now support variable

fonts. Pamental thinks these are market

signifiers. “If people see applications

supporting variable fonts, they’re more

likely to try them,” he says. “The best way

to work with them at the moment is in

the browser but there are still plenty of

designers who aren’t ready for that. They

need to be able to incorporate them into

their design process, work with them in

Sketch and Illustrator and then move into

implementation on the web.”

Awareness is one of the biggest

challenges that stand in the way of

widespread adoption. Pamental spoke at

20 events in 2019 and on average only half

the attendees had ever heard of variable

fonts. “Every article, podcast and

conference talk helps but we also need

readily available stuff,” Pamental says.

“Google Fonts is now rolling out variable

fonts in its API, so that you can start to

use some really high-quality fonts

through its service. If designers and

developers have stuff they can experiment

with that they know is going to work, it

will spread awareness and increase

adoption. That’s what Google Fonts did

the first time round with web fonts and I

“We use fewer fonts

and that gets passed

off as good typography.

It’s not. Effective

typography uses a range

of weights and widths”

enough different weights to warrant it
and they do that about 150 million times
a day. It speeds up the performance
without the need to change any of the
CSS. The technology is really well proven
in that respect.”
Even though they don’t use them in
production yet, a lot of companies are now
in the habit of ordering variable fonts for
their custom type. “I’ve just talked to a
Fortune 25 healthcare company that’s
getting custom type work done and
they’ve got variable fonts,” Pamental
reveals. “They don’t quite know what to
do with them yet – hopefully, I can help
them with that – but they had the foresight
to learn enough about the format to get a
variable version too.”
While variable fonts are fast picking up
momentum on the web, it’s important to
realise they work in print as well (Adidas,
for example, has used them for poster

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