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Variable Width Fonts

I know very little, way less than I should, about the new variable typography stuff that’s been gaining traction and was discussed in css-tricks’ most recent shop talk episode. 

However, I’m having serious skepticism about how they can replace entire font families. There’s a lot of the discerning human eye in creating various weights (and especially italic versions) of fonts. I just can’t picture how some math algorithm can make that go away.

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Multiple master icons

Just like fonts, icons can be designed in different weights. Here’s how it works in my current design, chubbicons:

 

These are all rendered at 32×32. The bold weight was designed with 1 pixel wide stroke on a 9×9 grid, while the light weight was 1 pixel on an 18×18 grid. The solid is just solid with some white 1 or 2 pixel details.

Everyone’s so big on the outlined icons, but I have a feeling solids will come back in style.

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Birds

Probably my best bird photo yet, since I finally figured out how to use the autofocus
Downy Woodpecker