Fraunces by Undercase Type
Fraunces is a beautiful old-style serif, inspired by early 20th century typefaces such as Windsor, Souvenir, and Cooper.
The variable axes
Fraunces has 4 variable axes: optical size, weight, softness, and wonky.
Axis | Tag | Range | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
Optical Size | opsz | 9pt – 144pt | 144pt | Labeled 9pt, 72pt, and 144pt in instances. |
Weight | wght | 100 – 900 | 900 | Labeled Thin, Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold, and Black in instances. |
Softness | SOFT | 000 – 100 | 100 | Labeled S000, S050, and S100 in instances. |
Wonky | WONK | 0 – 1 | 1 | Binary axis controls substitution of “wonky” characters. Automatically substitutes when opsz > 18. Not listed in instances. |
Optical Size Axis
Ties together changes in contrast, x-height, spacing, and character widths. As opsz
decreases, the x-height increases, spacing opens up, and the characters expand in width.
Weight Axis
The wght
axis spans from Thin (100) to Black (900).
Softness Axis
The SOFT
axis gives access to the softer, rounded forms that are available towards the Optical Min, but still retaining other Optical Sizing considerations, such as change in character width, spacing, tall ascenders, and shorter x-height.
Wonky Axis
A binary axis that subsitutes wonk
characters for more normalized characters, such as the leaning n/m/h in Roman, or the bulbous flags in the b/d/h/k/l of the Italic.
Using the font
The two installable .ttf files (Roman and Italic) include all 100+ styles and can be used in any app that has support for variable fonts and OpenType features, such as Adobe Illustrator.
For source files, documentation and instructions on how to build the font using command line, see the Fraunces GitHub repo.