Generative design

Member lesson

Generative type and lettering

Lesson 4 of 10 in Generative design.

Making your first variable font in Glyphs font editor · ArrowType
Lesson

Type has been generative for longer than almost any other design discipline. Interpolation between masters is how most families are produced, and a variable font is a system shipped as a file: a continuous space of letterforms rather than a set of them.

A compositor's hands set a row of abstract wooden shapes, curved, upright and angled, into a long tray, sliding thin brass spacers of different widths between them. Tweezers and spare spacers lie nearby.
The shapes are easy now. The spacers are the craft: making every gap look even.
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Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

  1. Question 1, locked

    Which of these words means this? “One file with continuous axes: weight, width, optical size. A generative system already.”

    • Variable font
    • Parameter
    • Instance
    • Emergence
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Letterforms defined by values rather than by drawn outlines.”

    • Vector output
    • Sameness
    • Novelty decay
    • Parametric type
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Generating intermediate weights between two drawn masters.”

    • Authorship
    • Human authorship
    • Generative design
    • Interpolation

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