Variable Fonts Workshop

Variable font testing tool and student work showcase

Web
Computational art
Motion
Type
Sound
Education

The Variable Fonts Workshop was a 4-week course taught at Rhode Island School of Design from 2023–2024. No Replica founder Gabriel Drozdov created and taught the course, during which students designed original variable fonts and remixed versions of open-source fonts. In addition to the course, we developed a website that enabled students to test their fonts. The site also functions as an ongoing showcase of student work from the course.

For the site, No Replica drew inspiration from hardware for creating music. Students can use an oscillator to see their fonts in motion, with six distinct waveform presets that control the direction and easing of the resulting animation.

Visit site↗

The site’s splash screen features an original variable font.

The site centers on a type testing interface reminiscent of musical synthesizers. This testing tool lets users type in text and adjust variable font axes using a variety of settings, such as animation direction or speed.