How can I create a variable font with multiple variations of each letter importing each letter as a jpg?

[royrivcab (Roy)]

I’m currently working on a client project which would require to create a font using at least 3-4 variations of each letter. The problem is that the design of letter is a jpg/png with a complex design. Is it possible to create a font importing jpgs/pngs? Attached you will find some examples of the uppercase letter N.

Thank you in advance for your support guys.

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[SCarewe (Sebastian Carewe)]

A colour font with images is possible, but not as a variable font. What are you trying to use the variable font functionality for?

Do you just mean that you would like to use different variations of a letter, selectable through OpenType features?

Have a look at this tutorial:

Creating an Apple color font (sbix) | Glyphs

[GeorgSeifert]

You could set up multipel Color glyphs and write feature variation code to access them by an axis slider.

[SCarewe (Sebastian Carewe)]

What Georg is referring to is this:

Glyphs substitution on variable font

Have you tried using alternate layers? Otherwise, for variable fonts, consider using the rvrn feature. Add the feature in Font Info > Features. Let’s say you have a weight axis (axis tag: wght) from 200 to 900 and you want the shapes to switch at 750. The code would look like this: condition 750 < wght; sub a by a.alt; sub b by b.alt; And so on. This means that you need to have an .alt (or whatever suffix you want to use) glyph for every glyph you want t substitute. Does this make sense for …

Essentially, it won’t be a variable font in the sense that shapes/images interpolate between each other, but you switch shapes at certain axis locations. Have a look at the thread I linked (and read it a bit further, there’s some important info on limitations).