Status Report: Microsoft

The second conference day began technical: Peter Constable started it off with a status report on implementation of font variations in Microsoft’s DirectWrite rendering and Windows 10 Creator. A series of tech demos showed what works and what’s still causing issues. Several variable font families were shown to work: AvenirNext, Selawik and featuring a size axis Sitka. With OS level support in DirectWrite these work in existing applications, like the Edge and Chrome browsers. As is often the case, it’s legacy issues that cause trouble: printers, for instance, can’t handle variable fonts, software must generate instances and send them. Edge does this, Chrome not yet. Also copy-pasting formatted text to some applications such as Word might cause issues, as Word relies not only only DirectWrite, but also uses GDI for rendering.

 

The STAT table was a further focus of this presentation. It can help with font naming issues for variable fonts and puzzling families together in a way also older applications understand them, something that has always caused some grievance for font engineers. This is done by assembling names from specific axis settings in a way older applications can understand them. A font like the Decovar, with it’s many non-traditional axes, can’t be used to its full potential here yet – a problem that still to be solved. Peter Constable ended with a call to submit ideas for further registered axes to the spec, like the grade- or spacing-axes that have been proposed.

 

 

Brainstorming uses beyond conventional typography

“I love variable fonts.” – Rob MacKaughan took the stage with an unmistakable message. In a large step away from the nitty-gritty of the OT specification and font tables, he showed experimental and creative uses that go beyond any registered axes.
The main focus of the experiments he presented was creating typography to aid reading. Moving away from a static typography, to a more dynamic texts, might prove to be benefit this cause.
This starts with what humans usually come equipped with: the visual cortex and the eye. In it are photoreceptors: cones, concentrated in the center of the eye, responsible for high resolution vision, as well as rods, more spread out, responsible for low resolution vision and colour. The area with the highest resolution, most crucial for reading, is only the most central part of our vision, not much more than the thumb of a stretched out hand. The peripheral vision, as confirmed by eye-tracking experiments, is no big aid in character recognition.

 

Maybe variable fonts with can change that? As an experiment the Sitka typeface was extended by an additional axis, the outer pole of which features a design of letters aimed to make character recognition in the peripheral view easier: x-height extended to the cap-height, less contrast, open counters and a focus on features that make each character unique. In essence an exaggerated version of things that might also be found in a size master. The other end of the axis is the regular Sitka typeface, as it’s conventionally read in the visual span. At this stage the results are still quite theoretical: an animation can mimic the eye-movement along a line of text, the area of focus in conventional Sitka gradually blending to the exaggerated versions at the outer ends. Blurring these mimics the limits of vision. If these ideas do help with reading can probably only truly be judged when strapped into an eye-tracking device where what is meant to be seen in the peripheral vision can only be seen in the peripheral vision.

 

Three other experiments with variable fonts aim to provide ideas in assisting people with reading, who are dyslexic. For those dealing with dyslexia word shapes are not distinguished as easily, letters “stack up” on each other. A way to aid reading here is through motion. Rob MacKaughan provided three methods how this can be done: in the simplest solution by pacing through a sentence, progressively highlighting parts in bold (through a duplexed weight axis). The second text was animated with the help of an axis that drew letters like they would were they written and as a finale the audience could view type move through space with 1950s style 3D glasses. A hint at what’s possible in with VR technologies.
A final word was given urging everyone to not only focus on typographers and designers, but pushing boundaries for everybody. These experiments might provide solutions to ease reading, they might not. What makes them worthwhile in any case is the fact that they open the scope of what variable fonts might be able to do in areas like animation or interface design.