Hacker News Reader

Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

I've never seen a font designed with both serif and sans-serif faces before (though it's seemingly unclear whether the Aptos Serif variant shown in the article is going to make it into wide availability.)

Makes me wonder: could "serif to sans-serif" be an OpenType variable-font axis — i.e. could a font be designed to gradually "grow" serifs out of a sans-serif base, and to look good at any "degree" of serif-ication, the way modern variable fonts are designed to look good at any "degree" of weight?

What would a 30% serif'ed font even look like? Would it have little vestigial bumps only visible at large optical sizes?

View on HN

There are a few fonts exploring this concept here: https://v-fonts.com/tags/C114

TT Geekette Variable there is especially bizarre/interesting, in that it conflates weight and serification, in that some, but not all, serifs appear only at the lightest weight. Which almost makes a strange kind of sense, given that a fat enough main stroke erases serifs anyway. You can almost say that serifs as ornaments can only usefully exist below some ratio of optical weight to optical size.

ITC Stone exists in both Sans and Serif options, and Lucida Sans is paired with Lucida Bright (serif) as well as Lucida Fax (almost slab serif).

Adobe's Penumbra font has a sans--serif axis, well, had.

Similarly there was the font Walker which had "snap-on" serifs:

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/139311

Yes, the distinction is quite subtle for the variable axis options.

It's not uncommon for contemporary font families to include both Serif and Sans versions.

The "Best of" page by FontFont, a famous foundry, includes several of these pairs (FF Meta, FF Tisa, FF Yoga):

https://www.fontshop.com/people/fontshop-team/fontlists/best...

Apple's San Francisco has a serif counterpart in New York. ABC Dinamo has a dual serif/sans typeface called Arizona^[1]. It even has that set as a variable axis!

[1]: https://abcdinamo.com/typefaces/arizona

They exist. You can read about the free Reforma typeface for example which goes from sans to serif. https://pampatype.com/blog/reforma

Reply on news.ycombinator.com