Variable Font Support

[rememberlenny]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Can Figma support variable fonts and create a UI for manipulating the variation-settings CSS parameter? These are important design elements that are available in browsers, but are not usable in old-world design software. Figma would be leading the design world if it support VF.

Describe the solution you'd like Fonts with variable headings and variation-settings should have sliders/ui for manipulating and visualizing the results.

Describe alternatives you've considered Without support, there aren't any alternatives. Only other option is to use font instances.

Additional context https://www.typenetwork.com/brochure/opentype-font-variations/ https://opentype.js.org/font-inspector.html https://www.axis-praxis.org/specimens/__DEFAULT__

[rememberlenny]

@dfield ^^

[rememberlenny]

Thank you @neversitdull

[ian-cox]

With variable fonts supported in all modern browsers I would love to have access to these features.

[himichelleng]

+1 for this request!

[be5invis]

+1

[AdamSabla]

+1

[rememberlenny]

I am building a Variable Fonts plugin for Figma. It's not going to be fully integrated with the Figma UI, due to the limitations of the Figma rendering engine (which is awesome). It will let you render text in the Figma canvas and control a Variable Font's properties using a control panel.

If you are interested in learning more, please let me know: Lenny@publicart.io

-- Leonard Bogdonoff rememberlenny@gmail.com Blog http://medium.com/@rememberlenny | Portfolio http://rememberlenny.com/ | @rememberlenny http://twitter.com/rememberlenny 949-322-8496

On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 10:38 AM Adam Sabla notifications@github.com wrote:

+1

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/figma/community/issues/2?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAKFJDVP7TSKKC6646FWKCTQF7Y7ZA5CNFSM4G2D5GTKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOD5AM2HQ#issuecomment-524340510, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAKFJDVRFOXRUKMGA3FHT4LQF7Y7ZANCNFSM4G2D5GTA .

[tedmcdo]

+1

[luismqueral]

+1 😬

[dallasbpeters]

👍

[TomS-]

@rememberlenny How is that going? I have a variable font and I can see all the different weights but selecting them changes nothing. It would be amazing to have support for this.

[rememberlenny]

@TomS- I've heard interest, but no concrete action planned.

[glyphe]

Wish it would work since Sketch now also supports it.

[benbalderas]

+1

This should definitely be a priority

[jamesgaddum]

+1!

[ponchofreedo]

+1

[eagleeyejack]

+1

[ximenavf92]

+1

[robinisaksson]

+1

[olgageletina]

+1 – Sketch supports variable fonts well by auto detecting the axises

[rememberlenny]

Hello all!

I made the original post and am now building a plug-in to use variable fonts.

You can foow the progress here:

https://twitter.com/rememberlenny/status/1259740133739421699?s=21

[rememberlenny]

Major breakthrough!

The variable fonts render in the plugin iframe, and I'm able to use a JavaScript library to read the font header data to pull the axis information. Here is what I have working so far!

Plugin code for this is here: https://github.com/rememberlenny/figma-variable-fonts Design file for this is here: https://www.figma.com/community/file/841567018431192369/Figma-Variable-Font-Plugin-design

[luismqueral]

Nice! Thanks for the contribution :-)

[grillitype]

+1000

[aaronmartin-rl]

Please soon!

[kuvahaku]

+1

[sandersturing]

Is there any news on this? The request is from more than a year ago, but it seems like quite a important and basic feature to have in (digital) design software nowadays?

We switched to Figma from Sketch for a project, but our design heavily relies on variable fonts. This actually makes Figma unusable for this project at this point, right?

[jorgeneidem]

+1, our team recently switched to Figma and I was very surprised to discover the lack of support for variable fonts, as Sketch has supported this since v59 (October 2019).

@sandersturing I had the same thought, but most variable fonts also come as font instances. You could install those for use in Figma, and if your product uses other variable weights, you can design for approximation using the instances closest to your variable weights until support arrives. It's not optimal, but also far from unusable.

[sandersturing]

t's not optimal, but also far from unusable

@jorgeneidem Thanks for the suggestion. In the case of this specific project it doesn't help much. We use the variable width to make text fill out the space it can take up. So obviously this is a different value for every word, phrase and situation. But we will relook at Figma for future projects.

[davelab6]

https://github.com/rememberlenny/figma-variable-fonts

[grillitype]

Just wanted to add our support for this feature 👍 We’re already shipping variable fonts, but need the industry tools like Figma to support them so it actually makes sense for our typefaces’ users to put them to good use.

[arrowtype]

Shipping a typography tool that doesn’t support variable fonts is a bit like shipping a color picker that only supports a limited palette of preset swatches, rather than the 256³ (16 million) possible colors from RGB values.

Limited color presets are obviously handy in some cases, but would be a pretty big absence of user control in a pro tool like Figma. Limited type style presets are similarly constricting when near-infinite possibilities could be readily available!

[chrissimpkins]

+1

[oolong32]

Variable Fonts are part of the latest OpenType standard and not some flash in the pan. I for my part would be very sorry to see Figma lose its advantage over XD because of lack of support of standard technology.

[jon-lehman]

+1 for variable font support in Figma. Was super excited to jam with a sweet new variable font I picked up and was sad to see Figma still doesn't support them.

[davelab6]

Apparently Figma folks want to see more case studies of VFs used in shipped product at scale.

[alexalspaugh]

Here's a great talk from Apple that goes over using variable fonts and why they're helpful. Can't get much more at scale than IOS. Would love to see this supported in Figma.

[alexfjelldal]

OH YES PLEASE!

[jecl]

I need this in my life!

[seq000]

+1 for variable font support in Figma.

[vitavalka]

Also +1 as it seems fonts are a mess in Figma. I'm currently playing with it and fonts in Sketch are fine, while they're not fine in Figma. Eg. Inter

[MrBushid0]

+1

[danielcampos15]

Not yet?! Figma is kidding...

+1