These are exciting times in the font world. “Variable fonts” are the magic words in type technology these days, and interpretations of its meaning interpolate from one extreme to the other. This new, evolving technology offers as many possibilities as well as challenges and problems. Therefore this is the right time to question future conventions. At least, this is what we tried last Saturday in our talk If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old at TypoLabs, Berlin.

Within less than an hour we’re exploring the options of just 1 interpolation axis. And what happens if there are 26 axes to play with? And hey, what happens if we put 241 axes in the game? You probably can’t imagine yet what these possibilities are. And what can happen if you add the remaining 63759 axes to the game? How much could actually fit in a font? How intelligent can letters be? And aren’t there any other ways to design type? Or to use type? Questions, questions.

Note: because the word ‘variable’ should of course be differently pronounced every time, we’re already practising for next time.