[crazygringo]

As a coder, probably not.

As a designer, absolutely. The exact weight of a font can make a ton of difference in a finished product, and it's frequent to be frustrated that the font isn't available in the weight that would look right for the needs -- you need something in between semibold and bold, or something in between regular and condensed, or something oblique but not that oblique.

It's the difference between a design being good, and a design being beautifully "just right" with everything perfectly in proportion.

So for that, variable fonts are a godsend.

That being said, I've never seen a slider between proportional and monospace before. That's just weird. :)

[andrewingram]

Is there anything related to outputting a static font from a variable font + config? The problem I have with variable fonts is that whilst they're smaller than an entire font family, they're usually significantly larger than individual fonts -- to the point that I can't justify using them on the web.

[patrickthebold]

It's perfect for those times where you need something monospace, but not too monospace.

[jameshart]

Not sure if you're being facetious - it's actually not a crazy idea. For example: displaying 'code' at display font sizes.

If I want to show something that looks like code - like an HTML tag or something - at a heading size on a page or a poster, a proper monospaced coding font is going to look bad. Playing with the MONO slider on https://www.recursive.design/ for a string like '<blink />' does a good job of producing something that looks like code but isn't swamped with too much whitespace...

[WA]

Interesting. But given that so many big brands simply use Arial or Helvetica for their logo and brand, is this really a thing?

[crazygringo]

Helvetica (Neue) comes in more weights and variations than practically any other typeface. So it is really a thing.

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/neue-helvetica/

Also, Helvetica is popular in large part because of the very precise personality it has with is quite amenable to the image corporations often like to portray. It become widely available on computers, starting with Macs, because it was already such a useful font. Major corporations aren't choosing Helvetica simply because it's a default font on computers. And, of course, it's not like a majority of companies use Helvetica for their branding or anything -- it's a popular font, but where popular means maybe 3% or 5%, not 50%.

[Firehawke]

Another way of saying it would be:

Helvetica was put on Macs because it was so popular as a useful font, rather than it becoming popular because it was on Macs.