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🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Jun 4, 2021 11:41 PM UTC:

I learned last night about a new type of font file called a Variable font. This includes all the styles for a typeface within a single file. Previously, each style of a typeface would get its own font file. Since the typeface used for the main body of this site was now available as a Variable font, I updated it. But while I was at Google Fonts today, I decided to check out other fonts.

I ended up replacing Lora with Literata. This typeface was designed for use with Google Play Books, and its basically the Google counterpart to Amazon's Bookerly. I liked it better than Lora for a few reasons.

  1. It looks cleaner at small sizes. At the size of text used on the website, some characters in Lora have a bit of a blur to them, because they are being anti-aliased to look good at a smaller size than they were actually designed for. At the same size, characters in Literata lack this blur.
  2. Its lowercase letters have a lower X-height, which creates more contrast between upper and lowercase letters.
  3. Although its Q does reach underneath the next letter, it's only by a little bit, and I otherwise prefer the look of its Q, whose curved tail is similar to the one used in Century Schoolbook.

I also replaced FreeMono with Courier Prime, because with Game Courier on the site, I wanted a Courier monospace font. I have begun using it instead of the sans serif font for headings.

While I did try some other sans serif fonts, I stuck with Noto Sans. Presently, Literata is the only Variable font on the site. The others use individual font files for each style.


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