The Twelve Days of Ax-mas

Did you know that the twelve days of Christmas are supposed to start on Christmas and continue through January 5?

Maybe this is common knowledge, but I had always assumed that December 25 was the last day. That probably comes from the idea I can’t imagine anyone still wanting to listen to the song well into the new year.

With that in mind, even if no one is supposed to be receiving a partridge in a pear tree until December 25, you’ll be receiving the first of The Twelve Days of Ax-mas starting tomorrow.

I’m hoping you’ll join me in this experiment: I’ll write to you each day for the next twelve weekdays, on a different variable font axes.

If a Variable Font is “a single font file that behaves like many,” then how it behaves like many is defined by the axes you’ve designed.

In your own typefaces, you’re probably already distributed or worked on fonts with some of the registered, common axes like Width or Weight. We’ll start there, and also make some of what was implied about your used of the axes, explicit, so you have even more context for your next release.

Then, we’ll quickly move onto some axes that aren’t registered or standardized yet—some might be in the future, some I’m sure won’t be.

Until next time,
Kenneth