User Guide

FontLab 4
584
Design Axes and Dynamic Range
It is possible to define a number of properties of an MM font using master
fonts. These properties are called design axes, or simply axes, for short.
You can define as many of these design axes as you want, but four axes in a
single MM font is the practical limit since there is no program as of this
printing that can use more than that. The number of masters that is
necessary to define a given number of axes can be calculated as 2
n
, where n
is the number of axes. So a single axis font requires 2 masters, a two-axis
font - 4 masters, a three-axis font - 8 masters and finally, a four-axis font
requires 16 masters.
You can see in this picture how design axes and master fonts are used to
select an intermediate design of the MM font:
Weight Axis
50 1450Different intermediate positions on the axis