News has a critical need for legibility, clarity, contrast and a distinct visual voice and thats why variable fonts matters to news brands.
Type is news brands most important brand asset to create recognition and trust. Custom type has been a dominating trend in news typography but type needs to be dynamic too. Variable fonts creates new possibilities for custom fonts in digital allowing type that adapt to digital platforms, to motion and kinetic typography, following the development of news storytelling.
— We’re going to see more growth in the use of variable typography as brands are driven by digital and need to adapt for different channels and devices, say’s Creative Boom.
Work where the studio directed brand and design with variable fonts
- Aftonbladet — A Brand refresh of Swedens largest news brand
- Mobile first redesign project for Helsingin Sanomat
A variable font can be a beautiful homage such as the custom variable font Paris 2024 by: Julie Soudanne Elliott Amblard Tina Payet Sylvain Boyer. The typeface for the Olympic Games 2024, highly influenced by the Art Deco movement, which pays homage to the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.
A typeface built to create stronger branding such as the distinct chunky sans You tube Display by Sharp Type, or a new exploration in geometry and continuity for the Arabic script, like Roobert Arabic by Khajag Apelian, Wael Morcos.
Or the typeface Control, by Christian Schwartz and Miguel Reyes that needed to be a variable font to fully express the idea behind it; The family can express itself as a tastefully legible mid-century grotesk, or it can morph into a tightly spaced headline face straight out of the 1970s. Only imagination limiting you and yes, the axes too …
Why variable fonts matters to news brands:
- Variable fonts load faster
- Variable optical fonts improves legibility
- Variable fonts creates contrast
Load faster
Variable fonts load faster: with one small file instead of many static files. Why it matters? Today most news sites are designed with a limited number of fonts. This has been a technical restrain for news sites that variable fonts can sort.
Optical
Variable optical fonts: improve legibility and readability. What works at small sizes in body copy text or UI is different than what works on a headline or on a billboard. With a variable font its possible to improve optically as long as the typeface design supports it to also improve legibility and readability for mobile screens.
Contrast
Contrast is critical in news design to prioritise content and create news clarity. A variable font can create more contrast for a news site. Contrast is also important from an aesthetic point of view. Variable fonts create contrast in weights, width and upright to italic just like static fonts can but in one file.
A variable font is a typeface that act like many and can change character just like an actor, allowing for seamless, real-time adjustments to weight, width, slant, and other attributes. Unlike static fonts requiring separate files for every style, this technology uses axes to enable a continuous range of, for example, weight or width.