Should horizontal metrics remain the same between weights?

Design
1

I’m new to type design and very much learning the ropes. The project I’m working on is a monospace font with light, regular, and bold weights so far.

My question is this - in general, should horizontal metrics remain consistent between weights?

2

In a monospace font, no. The whole point of a monospace font is that all glyphs have the same width, across all styles.

Apart from that, with normal (non-mono) fonts, it’s your choice. You can decide to make the metrics the same across all weights, then you have what’s called a duplexed font. The idea is that text doesn’t reflow if you change the weight of the text (or parts of it). Can be practical in certain contexts.

Usually, though, the spacing is not the same and varies between styles. It’s up to you to decide.

1 Like
3

Are you saying monospaced fonts are usually not duplexed? Is there any statistic/research/methodology? Curious because my intuition suggests they should mostly be duplexed, and a bunch of random ones that I just checked are.

4

Sorry, with “apart from that” I meant non-monospace fonts.

1 Like
5

Thank you so much. This is incredibly helpful and matched my assumption.

I appreciate the thoughtful response!