Variable font weight slider goes from black to regular to black (instead of light)

1

I’m testing an exported variable font with a single weight axis and run into a slider question:

It correctly slides through the weight progressions (light to black, with regular as the origin at 400) in tools like Font Gauntlet and Wakamai Fondue, but in Illustrator it slides from black to black (with some intermediate weights inbetween). i.e. it starts at regular, and sliding to the right increases weight up to the black, but sliding to the left of regular also increases weight, instead of getting lighter.

I’ve tried to use the Glyphs recommended settings, and the weight classes and axis location values seem to be correct. Curious if any thoughts? Thx.

2

How are you testing in Illustrator? Are you using the Adobe Fonts folder?

3

Yes, exporting straight to that folder. Tried quitting and reopening app, but same result.

4

Can you drop your font onto fontbakery.com? Maybe that will give you a clue as to what’s wrong.

5

hmm… it seems to pass all the variable-related checks (only a few warnings for some small, unrelated things).

6

Would you mind sending me your exported variable font in a private message? Then I can have a look.

7

Did you make sure you have the latest version? Adobe’s OTVAR implementations have had severe bugs. I don’t know about Illustrator, but in InDesign it has been fixed recently. 28.4.1 is the latest stable version in any event.

8

Good to note. Actually it’s a little older version currently. Have had relative success with of vf exports in this version. Will see about if the update will do it.

9

… deleting the values (but keeping the custom parameter there and checked) in the editable field of the Font Info main window for ‘Axis Mappings’ seems to have ‘fixed’ it, for now at least, as it slides properly with the weights back and forth in Illustrator (also still seems ok in other testing tools).

10

It’s recommended to use the Axis Location parameter instead.

Set one per master and exporting instance with the external values you want to be used.

11

Thanks. Actually, do have those in place already. So they stayed intact.

12

Then you can safely delete the Axis Mappings parameter, that is replaced by the Axis Location parameters. That was probably the issue.

1 Like
13

ah ok. sounds like it. thanks for the feedback : )