Complicated Design Space Issue

[WeiH]

Summary: Updating a font family into a VF: 2 instances in the original MM project were repositioned in the designspace, how do I update the rest of the instances to match the previous instances.

I apologise for the convoluted post as I've had a hard time wrapping my head around this problem.

I am updating a 2 axes font project with width and weight axes ([0,0] to [1000,1000]) into a variable font.

The situation previously was that there was 4 masters, one in each corner, then 5 full intermediate masters were generated and problematic glyphs edited. See Image1.png and Image2.png:

 

(The glyph representation is not the end typeface, I've just added it for ease of understanding, and the whole structure has been simplified)

Normally I would simply go in and delete all the un-edited glyphs in the intermediate masters and add them as partial masters and call it a day. 

However, 2 of the intermediate masters have actually been repositioned. What was generated for UltraLight (400,15) has been moved to (400,0). Then when the SemiBold (400, 500) instance was generated, it obviously was no longer the same as generating the SemiBold (400,500) if the UltraLight (400,15) master hadn't been moved to (400,0). I've found that the actual position of the SemiBold if generated with only the main corner masters would be around (400, 507), so effectively (400, 507) has been moved to (400, 500). See Image 3:

This means in the VF where I want to have intermediate partial masters/glyphs, I have to set the correct position otherwise the rest of the glyph set won't match up in weight. 

But now my issue is that the rest of the instances don't match the previous family. What transformation do I have to apply to the values of the rest of the instances make sure the rest of the instances match up. The structure of the new designspace is like Image4.png where SemiBold (400,507) remains but UltraLight (400,0) is generated and then glyph corrections applied there (therefore the instances along the axes (0,0) to (1000,0) will be lighter than the original family): 

I imagine the designspace will change something like Image5.gif in order for the rest of the instances to match where they were before. If the following gif is not animated see the gif here.

I am happy to pay someone to help me fix this, so please feel free to reach out.

[Adam Twardoch (Lists)]

I've forwarded your email to Łukasz Dziedzic who has some (yet unpublished) code for arbitrary distortions of multiaxis designspace and finding the right instances. 

Best,

Adam

On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 at 07:12, WeiH <weiand...@gmail.com> wrote:

Summary: Updating a font family into a VF: 2 instances in the original MM project were repositioned in the designspace, how do I update the rest of the instances to match the previous instances.

I apologise for the convoluted post as I've had a hard time wrapping my head around this problem.

I am updating a 2 axes font project with width and weight axes ([0,0] to [1000,1000]) into a variable font.

The situation previously was that there was 4 masters, one in each corner, then 5 full intermediate masters were generated and problematic glyphs edited. See Image1.png and Image2.png (The glyph representation is not the end typeface, I've just added it for ease of understanding, and the whole structure has been simplified)

Normally I would simply go in and delete all the un-edited glyphs in the intermediate masters and add them as partial masters and call it a day. 

However, 2 of the intermediate masters have actually been repositioned. What was generated for UltraLight (400,15) has been moved to (400,0). Then when the SemiBold (400, 500) instance was generated, it obviously was no longer the same as generating the SemiBold (400,500) if the UltraLight (400,15) master hadn't been moved to (400,0). I've found that the actual position of the SemiBold if generated with only the main corner masters would be around (400, 507), so effectively (400, 507) has been moved to (400, 500). See Image 3.

This means in the VF where I want to have intermediate partial masters/glyphs, I have to set the correct position otherwise the rest of the glyph set won't match up in weight. 

But now my issue is that the rest of the instances don't match the previous family. What transformation do I have to apply to the values of the rest of the instances make sure the rest of the instances match up. I understand for the instances closer to the (400,15), the may have to be extrapolated. The client and I have decided it's fine that those weights don't match up perfectly, so I'm happy to keep the as close as possible. However for the weights closer to SemiBold (400,507) they need to be close as those are the Regular Weight - Normal Width instances. I could visually try find out what matches but I know there's a mathematical solution.

I am happy to pay someone to help me fix this, so please feel free to reach out.

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[WeiH]

Thank you very much Adam! I've edited the post since so I hope Łukasz sees the corrected post.

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