Some more words on Zeitung in the OpenType Variable Font format, about Automatic Optical Size and Automatic Glyph Substitution.

The OpenType Variable Font technique is still in development, tools for making these fonts are still in development, implementation and support for these fonts are still in development. However, if you want to experience our recent release Zeitung as an OpenType Variable Font, visit our homepage www.underware.nl in a browser that supports this font format. At this moment that’s only Webkit Nightly, which explains the “Webkit Nightly Bonus” subtitle for a special section completely at the bottom of our homepage.

One more thing
The nerds, the lucky bastards and some geeks, anybody with that browser will see a demo at the bottom of the homepage which is invisible to other visitors using a less advanced browser. They can play with the tuners and experience how changing the size will automatically select the correct optical size of the font family. That’s what you’ve been waiting for, no? Some glyphs, eg. &, will automatically change shape when the point size becomes rather small. Additionally, changing the weight of the font will result in a change of shape of some other glyphs. See how the € swaps from 2 to 1 cross bar when the weight increases. Or how the tail of the Q suddenly doesn’t enter the counter anymore when its weight is too dark. This happens automatically while playing with the tuners, and happens live your browser. No fake news, no fake type. Man, this is 2016 and this is live. Not everything is bad this year.

Automatic glyph substitution depending on weight, live in your browser.

Automatic glyph substitution depending on size, live in your browser.

For those who don’t have the latest browser and latest operating system: just watch this movie and see all typographic splendour you will have your hands on in the future.

If you’re as much worried as we are about support of variable fonts in all those other places, we’ve got excellent news. Zeitung also comes as Zeitung Flex™. Flex is not just our word for variable fonts, but these Flex™ fonts take over where support for variable fonts stops. At the moment, that’s pretty quick. So with Zeitung you can have real variable fonts in environments where the OpenType Variable Font format is supported, and have the same features with Flex fonts in all other environments. The Zeitung Flex CC Extension makes sure that even in desktop apps like Adobe InDesign or Illustrator, you have variable font features at your disposal.

We told you: Relax, you can Flex.