Create variables of fonts

1

Hi, guys!

I’m starting to create a font and it is going to be pretty complex and have a lot of variables, five of width (narrow, condensed, regular, wide and extra wide) and 18 of weight per width variable (extra light, extra light italic, light, light italic, thin, thin italic, regular, italic, demi bold, demi bold italic, bold, bold italic, black, black italic, extra black and extra black italic). I already know how to make the italic version, but I have a couple of questions about the other variables. Any help will be appreciated.

First question: is it possible to vectorize the font characters in illustrator and put then inside glyphs?

Second question: Is it possible to make the font thicker/thinner in Glyphs, in order to make weight variables?

Third question: is is possible to change the width of the font in glyphs?

2
  1. Yes, but AFAIK you’ll need to do some copy-pasting between them, and set up the AI file with guides for baseline, etc.
  2. Yes. Either manually or with a Filter>Transformation>Transform scale for a quick one.
  3. The width of the metric or the width of the glyph itself? Answer to both: Yes.

Best solution is to create two or more intermediate masters, and interpolate them, as in the tutorial:
https://glyphsapp.com/tutorials/multiple-masters-part-1-setting-up-masters

3

Thanks, I will try that!