Well, some of it is, anyway. I always wondered what would happen when my open source ETC typefaces finally made it to Google Fonts. Aside from knowing that they are used on over 100,000 websites and getting served up millions of times each week through the API, it’s hard to tell, honestly. Those are numbers. And sure, they’re in Figma, which is also great. But the latest random “find” is a weird but practical one. Adobe Fonts đź”
It makes sense, since my work is open source, paid for by Google (thank you). It’s wild to see the closed, somewhat pricey Adobe ecosystem adopt typefaces that are available for free elsewhere. I grappled with that in the past, specifically early on in the Typekit days. But not now. As a designer it is very handy to have access to some (not all) Google Fonts right in Creative Cloud. I always wondered how Adobe would have dealt that with the Figma acquisition they ultimately backed out of. But this seems like the most logical outcome. Bring what Figma did (100s of Google fonts) into the apps people are already using. It wasn’t a matter of “if” just “when”.
The way they choose to visualize—and have you interact with—the variable axes is…a choice. It’s not bad, it’s just different, and it doesn’t really make sense to me. Adjusting the weight gives you a weird perception that the overall height of the font changes, which is misleading. But you know what, people will install these and figure it out on their own 🤷 File that under “not a big deal”.
The other weird thing is, they’re not using all of my ETC fonts, and even though Epilogue is variable, they’re only serving up the static styles. The rest that I’ve found: Gluten, Grandstander, Sono, Imbue, and Tourney. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Adobe continues to add and iterate. They’re still in the game, after all. And there are tons of great typefaces on Google Fonts that have yet to make it over. Keep your apps updated, I guess!