For the release of the Diplöe family, Monokrom commissioned Wim Wepster to develop an InDesign script for interpolating text gradients between two instances of a variable font.

variable-font-tween.jsx

Download variable-font-tween.jsx from its Sourcehut repository.

Requirements

The script is developed for use with Adobe InDesign and any OpenType variable font.

Getting started

• Open Adobe InDesign and navigate to the Scripts panel (Windows > Utilities > Scripts).

• Right-click the “User” folder, and choose “Reveal in Finder” (OSX) or “Reveal” (Windows).

• Paste the “variable-font-tween.jsx” file into the User folder.

• Go back to Adobe InDesign and double click “variable-font-tween.jsx” in the Scripts panel.

For more details on working with scripts in InDesign, see Adobe’s Automate workflows with scripts.

Instructions

• With the Variable Font Tween panel open, select some text typeset in a variable font.

• Use the left sliders to define the starting point of your gradient in the variable spectrum.

• Use the right sliders to defined the end point of the gradient in the variable spectrum.

• Select the transition curve.

• Click “Tween”.

The operation is relatively straight-forward. The only trouble you might run into is the speed of calculation when manipulating long texts.

License

This project is released under the MIT License. The code is provided as is, with no warranties or promise of support. Please review the license description for more details.