User Guide

Multiple Master Fonts
587
Optical Size
This is an axis for high-end typography. In the pre-computer age
typographers used metal fonts that were aligned in strings manually or
with the help of complex mechanical machines. In those times fonts were
not “scalable” and there was a separate physical typefont for each point size
of a typeface. And fonts that were designed for different point sizes of the
same typeface had slightly different designs for improved legibility:
Designs of the same character for 6 and 72 pt. point size
When scalable fonts appeared this typography feature wasn’t compatible
with the technology so it all but disappeared. We had scalable fonts that
could be shrunk or enlarged to any point size, but the price for this was a
little decrease in the quality of typeset text.
With Multiple Master fonts it is possible to define two optical size master
fonts, one for small point sizes and another for large point sizes, and use
MM interpolation to create the proper font design for the final selected
point size:
72 pt. master font 6 pt. master font