{"version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "FontLab Blog", "home_page_url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/", "feed_url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/feed_json_created.json", "description": "News, technical writing, and updates from FontLab.", "icon": "https://i.fontlab.com/menu/fontlab-logo.svg", "authors": [{"name": "Fontlab Ltd."}], "language": "en", "items": [{"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/05/13/variable-fonts-file-size/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/05/13/variable-fonts-file-size/", "title": "Variable fonts WERE about file size \u2014 and still are on your phone", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

\n

The fashionable take is that variable fonts are not about file size. The fashionable take is wrong, or at least wrong by half.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T11:54:27+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["cjk", "file-size", "indic", "mobile", "opentype", "smartwatch", "variable-fonts", "web"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/01/20/color-font-wars-ten-years-on/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/01/20/color-font-wars-ten-years-on/", "title": "The color font wars, ten years on", "content_html": "

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In 2013, four companies each decided the same thing: OpenType needed color. They each decided it differently.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T11:54:27+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["color-fonts", "colrv1", "history", "opentype-svg", "web"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/19/seurat-and-the-220000-dots/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/19/seurat-and-the-220000-dots/", "title": "Seurat and the 220,000 dots", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

\n

Georges Seurat spent two years applying roughly 220,000 dots to a canvas. The painting works because the dots don\u2019t blend on the canvas. They blend in your eye.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:48:58+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "Vexy Lines"}], "tags": ["art", "history", "pointillism", "vexy-lines"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/26/five-centuries-of-line/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/26/five-centuries-of-line/", "title": "Five centuries of line \u2014 D\u00fcrer, Hogarth, Bewick, Dor\u00e9", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb }

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A line can carry tone, texture, shadow, and emotion \u2014 and never once pretend to be a photograph. That is the whole argument of five centuries of printmaking, made with a burin, a graver, and eventually a stylus.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:54:37+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:48:58+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "Vexy Lines"}], "tags": ["engraving", "history", "illustration", "vexy-lines"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/04/02/drawing-the-invisible-minard/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/04/02/drawing-the-invisible-minard/", "title": "Drawing the invisible \u2014 contour lines and Minard", "content_html": "

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A contour line is a lie your map tells you so you can understand the truth. No hill has a line around it. The line is what you draw when the hill refuses to fit on a flat page.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:48:58+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "Vexy Lines"}], "tags": ["cartography", "data-visualization", "history", "vexy-lines"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/04/16/from-spirograph-to-fidenza/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/04/16/from-spirograph-to-fidenza/", "title": "From Spirograph to Fidenza", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb }

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The generative line has a genealogy. It runs from a physics lecture in 1815 through a children\u2019s toy in 1965 and a university lab in 2001, and it ends \u2014 so far \u2014 with an algorithm that sold for five million dollars.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:48:58+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "Vexy Lines"}], "tags": ["generative", "history", "processing", "vexy-lines"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/05/06/roboto-flex-thirteen-axes/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/05/06/roboto-flex-thirteen-axes/", "title": "Roboto Flex and the thirteen axes", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

\n

Christian Robertson drew Roboto in 2011 for Android. Ten years later, David Berlow\u2019s team turned it into something with thirteen knobs.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["fontlab-8", "opentype", "roboto", "variable-fonts"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/05/20/fvar-avar-hvar-the-tables-that-hold-it-together/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/05/20/fvar-avar-hvar-the-tables-that-hold-it-together/", "title": "fvar, avar, HVAR \u2014 the tables that hold a variable font together", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb }

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A variable font isn\u2019t a new file format. It\u2019s an OpenType file with a few extra tables nailed on, and once you know what each one does, the whole thing stops being magic.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["fontlab-8", "opentype", "variable-fonts"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/05/27/optical-sizings-lost-century/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/05/27/optical-sizings-lost-century/", "title": "Optical sizing's lost century", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

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William Caslon knew something in 1720 that digital type spent a century forgetting: a six-point letter is not a twelve-point letter made smaller.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["fontlab-8", "history", "optical-sizing", "variable-fonts"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/06/03/from-multiple-master-to-variable/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/06/03/from-multiple-master-to-variable/", "title": "From Multiple Master to OpenType variable fonts", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb }

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Variable fonts are not new. They are the third attempt at the same idea, by mostly the same engineers, after twenty-five years of finding out what didn\u2019t work.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["fontlab-8", "history", "multiple-master", "variable-fonts"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/06/10/woff-and-the-emmy-nobody-expected/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/06/10/woff-and-the-emmy-nobody-expected/", "title": "WOFF, WOFF2, and the Emmy that crowned web type", "content_html": "

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In 2021 the Television Academy gave the W3C a Technology & Engineering Emmy for font standardisation on the web. Among the recipients was the CEO of FontLab Ltd \u2014 a small, deeply satisfying acknowledgement that the work to make type travel cleanly across browsers, operating systems, and broadcast pipelines mattered enough to be celebrated alongside cinematography and sound design.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["history", "web-fonts", "woff", "woff2"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/06/17/emoji-is-older-than-you-think/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/06/17/emoji-is-older-than-you-think/", "title": "Emoji is older than you think", "content_html": "

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The story everyone tells is that Shigetaka Kurita designed emoji at NTT Docomo in 1999. It is a good story. It is also wrong.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["color-fonts", "emoji", "history", "opentype"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/07/01/bezier-vs-de-casteljau/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/07/01/bezier-vs-de-casteljau/", "title": "B\u00e9zier and de Casteljau: two engineers, one beautiful curve", "content_html": "

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In 1958, Paul de Casteljau at Citro\u00ebn worked out the mathematics of the curves we now draw with every day. A few years later Pierre B\u00e9zier at Renault arrived at the same idea independently and published it in 1962.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:08:42+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["bezier", "fontlab-8", "geometry", "history", "opentype"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/07/08/mingti-songti-minchotai-same-thing/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/07/08/mingti-songti-minchotai-same-thing/", "title": "Mingti, Songti, Minchotai \u2014 same thing", "content_html": "

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Three names. One style. A 19th-century missionary print shop at the centre of all of them.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["cjk", "fontlab-8", "history", "typography"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/07/29/hiragino-drawn-by-a-tiny-tokyo-studio/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/07/29/hiragino-drawn-by-a-tiny-tokyo-studio/", "title": "Hiragino, drawn by a tiny Tokyo studio", "content_html": "

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The Japanese font on your iPhone has been drawn since 1989 by a studio of three people.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["cjk", "fontlab-8", "history", "japanese", "typography"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/08/05/a1-mincho-behind-shinkais-atmosphere/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/08/05/a1-mincho-behind-shinkais-atmosphere/", "title": "A1 Mincho behind Makoto Shinkai's atmosphere", "content_html": "

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One of Morisawa\u2019s oldest typefaces made it into Your Name because it was imperfect in exactly the right way.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["cjk", "fontlab-8", "japanese", "mincho", "typography"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/09/16/tazugane-gothic-monotype-first-japanese/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/09/16/tazugane-gothic-monotype-first-japanese/", "title": "Tazugane Gothic, Monotype's first Japanese typeface", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb }

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The problem with Japanese set in Helvetica has annoyed transit designers for fifty years. In January 2017, Akira Kobayashi did something about it.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["cjk", "fontlab-8", "japanese", "typography"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/09/30/source-han-sans-the-opentype-ceiling/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/09/30/source-han-sans-the-opentype-ceiling/", "title": "Source Han Sans, the OpenType ceiling", "content_html": "

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Seven weights. Four regional variants. 65,535 glyphs each \u2014 the maximum an OpenType font can hold. Adobe and Google hit the ceiling on purpose.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["cjk", "fontlab-8", "opentype", "source-han"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/10/21/justfont-and-taiwans-crowdfunded-typeface/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/10/21/justfont-and-taiwans-crowdfunded-typeface/", "title": "justfont and Taiwan's crowdfunded typeface", "content_html": "

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NT$1.5 million in eighty minutes. NT$26 million in the end. A typeface named after a tea proved that East Asian type had an audience willing to pay for it.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["cjk", "fontlab-8", "taiwanese", "typography"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/11/18/the-fontlab-book-in-korean/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/11/18/the-fontlab-book-in-korean/", "title": "The FontLab book in Korean", "content_html": "

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Most font editors grew up thinking about Latin. In April 2025, a Korean designer published the book that translates FontLab into Hangul terms.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["books", "fontlab-8", "hangul", "korean", "typography"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/11/25/hangul-invented-1443-lost-found-in-a-coat/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/11/25/hangul-invented-1443-lost-found-in-a-coat/", "title": "Hangul \u2014 invented in 1443, lost, found in a coat", "content_html": "

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King Sejong personally invented the Korean alphabet in 1443. Its instruction manual was lost for four centuries, then carried through the Korean War inside a man\u2019s coat.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["fontlab-8", "hangul", "history", "korean"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/12/09/sandoll-the-foundry-behind-your-phone/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/12/09/sandoll-the-foundry-behind-your-phone/", "title": "Sandoll, the foundry behind your phone", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb }

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If you read Korean on a phone, you are almost certainly reading a Sandoll typeface. That is not an accident \u2014 it is four decades of infrastructure work.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["cjk", "fontlab-8", "korean", "typography"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/12/23/the-open-tool-ecosystem/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2025/12/23/the-open-tool-ecosystem/", "title": "The open tool ecosystem", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

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Most of the world\u2019s text passes through a library most people have never heard of.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["fontlab-8", "harfbuzz", "open-source", "tools"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/01/06/where-type-designers-are-made/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/01/06/where-type-designers-are-made/", "title": "Where type designers are made", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

\n

Six programmes shape almost everyone working in type design in 2026. All six are small. Most are slow by design.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["education", "fontlab-8", "schools", "type-design"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/01/27/cpal-and-css-font-palette/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/01/27/cpal-and-css-font-palette/", "title": "A colour font is a black-and-white machine", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

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A colour font with one palette is a coloured drawing. A colour font with thirty palettes is a theme system. The difference is CPAL, and most people walk right past it.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["color-fonts", "cpal", "css", "font-palette", "web"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/02/03/animating-font-variation-settings/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/02/03/animating-font-variation-settings/", "title": "Animating font-variation-settings: keeping motion buttery at scale", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb }

\n

Browsers have shipped robust font-variation-settings support since 2018, and animating those axes works the way the rest of CSS animation works. That is a small miracle, and the people who built it deserve a round of applause.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["animation", "css", "performance", "variable-fonts", "web"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/02/17/the-four-stack-of-screen-rendering/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/02/17/the-four-stack-of-screen-rendering/", "title": "The four-stack of screen rendering", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

\n

Most type designers know their fonts will be rendered differently on macOS and Windows. Fewer know the names of the four pieces of plumbing responsible. The names are worth knowing, because the plumbing shapes everything.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["fontlab-8", "hinting", "history", "rendering", "screens"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/03/gsub-gpos-and-harfbuzz/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/03/gsub-gpos-and-harfbuzz/", "title": "GSUB, GPOS, and HarfBuzz: the machinery under OpenType", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb }

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Every OpenType feature \u2014 ligatures, kerning, small caps, Arabic joining forms \u2014 runs through two tables and one engine. Most type designers know the features exist. Fewer know what the tables look like from the inside.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "FontLab"}], "tags": ["fontlab-8", "gpos", "gsub", "harfbuzz", "opentype", "shaping"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/17/halftone-fox-talbot-to-shantytown/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/17/halftone-fox-talbot-to-shantytown/", "title": "Halftone, from Fox Talbot to A Scene in Shantytown", "content_html": "

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\n

Photography arrived in the 1830s. Printing photographs in newspapers took another fifty years.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "Vexy Lines"}], "tags": ["halftone", "history", "print", "vexy-lines"]}, {"id": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/24/dithering-ditherpunk-and-bill-atkinson/", "url": "https://blog.fontlab.com/2026/03/24/dithering-ditherpunk-and-bill-atkinson/", "title": "Dithering, ditherpunk, and Bill Atkinson", "content_html": "

\"\"{.illu-thumb .illu-index}

\n

A one-bit display has no grey. Dithering is the sixty-year argument that it doesn\u2019t need one.

", "image": null, "date_modified": "2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-08T02:34:50+00:00", "authors": [{"name": "Vexy Lines"}], "tags": ["dithering", "graphics", "history", "vexy-lines"]}]}