Post #835277
2026-03-17 22:22 UTC
Replies (5)
-
@tphinney@typo.social 2026-03-17 22:45
@behdad I would not say that MOST new font families are designed variable-first. But variable fonts are nearly universally supported (although not always as well as one would like). You may be influenced by the fact that Google Fonts is at over 27% of their families being variable fonts, and has a reasonably steady upwards trend. But in contrast, Adobe Fonts seems to have more-or-less stalled in their adoption of variable fonts. They peaked at 7.6% in late 2024. Since then, they added 21 new variable font families and over 700 total font families. According to https://www.congruencemarketinsights.com/report/font-and-typeface-market, 48% of newly launched websites, and 34% of all websites, use variable fonts. (Note, that is SOME variable fonts, not all fonts used by such a website need be variable to be counted)
-
@khaled@typo.social 2026-03-18 00:38
@behdad I have not released a static font since I managed to make my first variable one. But also I use it for things that have to be dynamic so static fonts is not an option, and I also don’t sell fonts so I don’t have to worry about pricing or lack of support in certain environments.
-
@evert@mastodon.social 2026-03-18 08:14
@behdad I don't think Variable Fonts could have been adopted much faster in practice. Designers are more conservative than you think and don't forget that many corporate identities date back to before 2015. BTW where can I find more info on the variable-composites thing? I had never heard of it tbh.
-
@paulvanderlaan@typo.social 2026-03-18 08:19
@behdad A few points of observation: 1. I think there is a huge difference in the adoption of VFs with OFL licenses versus VFs with commercial licenses. Free stuff gets adopted much easier. Whereas our paying customers usually just license a number of static fonts.
-
@Richr@mastodon.social 2026-03-18 09:20
@behdad I'd definitely agree that adoption of VF is wide enough to NOT consider it a failure. Every time I give a talk about web typography I'll bang on about variable fonts (and OpentType features for that matter). Web browsers have excellent support - and were arguably the first bits of software to do so outside of type design tooling. Which is more than you can say for Keynote or any other Apple software, whose support is woeful outside of named instances.