Need advice with italic design in Variable Font

[HugoJ (Hugo Jourdan)]

Hi,

I’m working on an italic typeface with different widths and I’m stuck with it.
For the Condensed master, I added points on vertical stems to bring it more verticallity.
The Condensed master is more cubic and vertical, while the Extended master is really rounded.
For the upright version, the interpolation between Condensed and Extended works perfectly, but with the Italic, the interpolation is not really smooth and breaks a bit the outlines.

I know this is because I straightened some handles for the Italic.
Anyone has already experimented with this problem? How to solve it?

Thanks for you help

[Tosche (Toshi Omagari)]

I feel your pain. Interpolating between such different structures is always a problem when you see it with a microscope. Generally you should avoid straight segments and small ones too.
I’ve taken the former approach in Neue Plak which looks like this.

[HugoJ (Hugo Jourdan)]

Thanks for the reference Tosche.
After a few tries, I finally got something “correct” (not perfect) with the interpolation.

[Tosche (Toshi Omagari)]

It’s looking so much smoother! Nice work

[alexs (Alex)]

I solved that in Right Grotesk with special layers which hide the extra nodes and put the handles upright (or at italic angle), this way kinks cannot happen at all:

Here’s a little script that can save some time, run it with this selected:

[HugoJ (Hugo Jourdan)]

Thanks for the trick Alexs !
Your script will make my process smoother