Variable fonts have made as much of a contribution to shifting the design landscape over the last few years as have any tools we’ve seen introduced. So much of the fascination with a typeface that can easily be manipulated into various approved weights and widths has been in the visual demonstrations of the transformation occurring. Only less captivating is the static result of whatever characteristics the user lands on. Give credit where it is due, but we should only be modestly surprised at this next step in the evolution. A crafty designer posed the question, what happens if we create a variable font that transitions from a serif font for example to a very different sans serif option. Exploiting the premise, designers did their damnedest to display an analog demonstration of variable fonts by creating word marks where each letter sequentially shifted weight or another attribute. Evolved By Nature visually nails the process of evolution in their wordmark, but it becomes all the more evident as each letter, from left to right, starts to molt serifs until the final svelte transfiguration is evident. Even the asterisk logo for Evolved goes through a similar transition but in much tighter confines. This is a technique that shines when it comes to demonstrating diversity and change. Canal Brasil takes an even more brazen and entertaining path to this trend with a looped animation of letter-forms, each in full transformation as if caught squandering polyjuice potion.
