Science Gothic™ is a libre sans serif variable font commissioned by Google Fonts. Its wide design range allows it to take on many different looks and uses, striking or classy, from superheroes and detectives to cosmetics to business and technology. The basic design is based closely on Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic (1930–34) all-caps typeface for American Type Founders. Science Gothic adds a lowercase, extensive language coverage, and four design axes: extreme weight and width (much greater than the original), plus contrast (Y Opaque or ‘YOPQ’), and slant. Science Gothic is a team effort, by Thomas Phinney, Vassil Kateliev and Brandon Buerkle. Special thanks to Igor Freiberger for his early contributions.
This repo is where development and updates to this project can be found. Source files are in multiple formats: FontLab VFJ (vector font JSON) format, FontLab VFC (binary) format. Generated versions include UFO source files, and variable TTF end-user fonts. Occasionally we previously generated fonts corresponding to masters and instances, but these have not been not maintained going forward.
(Particularly major updates are described below, but not every update.)
Get the latest working variable font here: https://github.com/googlefonts/science-gothic/tree/main/fonts/variable Less flexible static fonts are here: https://github.com/googlefonts/science-gothic/tree/main/fonts/static/Instances
PLEASE report any BUGS OR ISSUES. You can file an issue right here in Github at: https://github.com/googlefonts/science-gothic/issues. Or just ask questions on social media, whatever. But feedback is welcome!
Our process for building fonts from our FontLab VFC/VFJ sources > UFO > FontMake > TTF (variable font) is now documented here: https://github.com/googlefonts/science-gothic/blob/master/documentation/compiling_fonts.md
- Ownership transferred to Google
- most bugs quashed
- close to being release quality
- Kerning is still in progress.
- Only a small handful of bugs left at this point.
- Just about done fixing all issues identified by FontBakery
- Slant axis is enabled! Note the form change for /a and /f when they get more than half slanted. This has generated a fair number of bugs for some glyphs in their slanted versions, but nothing unmanageable.
- Have started editing glyphs to tweak their shapes where slant does too much distortion of weight or stroke. Mainly diagonal strokes (think: A K N M R 2 4 7 & ?) and big curves (not many in this typeface, but they include: D 6 9)
- Kerning classes have all been created; kerning is well underway
Primary design work was basically done. Just a few details here and there to fix. We are now entering the endgame! For the next three weeks or so, we will:
- create kerning classes and do kerning
- create the Slant axis, slanted glyphs, and add form change for just a very few (/a for certain, maybe /f)
- fix bugs and address any issues discovered
98.5% done glyph design work
Made significant org/name changes to the former Contrast axis, now called “Y Opaque” ('YOPQ' axis tag). Instead of going from 0 – 100 (low to high) it goes from 18 to 124 (high to low contrast) representing the thickness of capital horizontal strokes, in thousandths of an em, at the default Medium weight. The default style is still low contrast, which is 124, at the “high” end of the horizontal stroke-thickness scale.
77% done glyph design work.
Added UFO sources, and first variable TTF built from UFO + FontMake (with latest FontMake and Python) rather than from exporting from FontLab. Although FontLab VI uses UFO + FontMake internally for its variable font generation, it uses an older version of FontMake. The UFO + FontMake approach makes it easier for future development to be made with any UFO-compatible font editor. See #91 for details.
49% done glyph design work.
Second variable font build. About 200 meaningful characters, including very nearly complete support for both English and Russian. 37% done glyph design work.
Around this time we had the last few contributions from Igor Freiberger. Thanks!
Added first built variable font! Thought it was buggy, but turns out that is just Illustrator. Font is lovely in Axis-Praxis. https://recordit.co/g9KnZq2Dbv . Also added separate fonts for instances (ouch 104 fonts!). And the .designspace file. ~ 26% done glyph design work.
16% done glyph design work.
Added recipes to build auto layers.
Added folder structure!
Masters folder:
- added variable font-in-progress in VFJ format (FontLab JSON text format)
- added Readme about formats etc.
Added OFL.txt Open Font License and info
Added FontLab .enc encoding file
Renamed the project to Science Gothic!
Started the repo
- Copyright holder: https://github.com/googlefonts/science-gothic/blob/master/AUTHORS.txt
- Contributors: https://github.com/googlefonts/science-gothic/blob/master/CONTRIBUTORS.txt
Science Gothic fonts and their source files are licensed to others under the open source SIL Open Font License v1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL) with no Reserved Font Name. To view the specific terms and conditions please refer to OFL.txt
Additional non-font source files are licensed to others under the Apache 2.0 open source license (https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0).
This typeface has extended Latin and extended Cyrillic, with over 1200 glyphs. FontLab .enc encoding file.
