Shed

Proto-web variable typography: SuperSizeMe
An archive project from 2016 about the creation of a JS variable font and the early exploration of variable typography on the web.

Once upon a time, in 2015, variable typography was nowhere to be seen.
For some it was a reminiscence of the past ; Multiple Masters from Adobe, TrueType GX format from Apple ; for some others (like me) it was a distant dream.
The technology had existed, but for most of us it remained inaccessible, hidden in abandonware, old Operating System and broken APIs.
The frustrating static nature of typography on the web was featured in online articles, side by side with the latest developments of responsive design.
Some shiny prototypes had emerged already, showing a glimpse of the promises of what variable typography could do, but nothing major or usable outside of the scope of a Demo.

That is the context in which I started to dig into the subject and started building what would become the short-lived SuperSizeMe, my Master’s Degree project. For it I turned to Prototypo’s tool, plumin.js. A revolutionary tool that allowed font manipulation and generation in the browser using Javascript. Armed with a web browser, a text editor and a trial Robofont license, I started to explore what would become known to the world 2 years later as Variable Fonts.

To read the article about the project that got published on the Axis Praxis blog at the time:
https://www.axis-praxis.org/blog/2016-11-28/13/research-versatile-fonts-by-baptiste-guesnon

To play with the Demo (webcam demos are broken in modern browsers):
https://baptisteguesnon.eu/DNSEP/

If you are interested in the tool:
https://github.com/BaGsn/SuperSizeMe-OTF-Variable-font