As of 3 September 2020, Google Font crossed over 1000 fonts with 1003 of them, the four being Kufam, a techy font, Kumbh Sans, a geometric sans, Grandstander, a playful sans, and Syne, a sans serif with interesting descenders that gets wider as its weight increasers. What a milestone, especially since three out of the quartet are variable fonts. It’s also good to see Google Fonts adding more variable typefaces to their catalogue — which is good news for people who deal with the web or just want to have some fun.
My favourite is probably Grandstander. It comes across as playful but not overtly so, and still mantains a level of seriousness thorough it wide gamut of weights. I find Kumbh Sans unremarkable but at least it isn’t lying on the extreme end of the quality spectrum. Syne seems to be making waves inside the designer circle, but it’s variable cut doesn’t render too well on the Google Fonts specimen page. Kufam supports Latin and Arabic scripts but it still wouldn’t be my top choice for a sci-fi themed typeface. To be frank, I’m slightly disappointed by this batch of typefaces. I would have prefered a typeface which has more functionality, such as Recursive, created by a more proffesional typographer. Nevertheless, it is still an accomplishment that Google Fonts has crossed the 1000 mark since its inception on 2010, which was a decade ago. A very well-planned aniversary, I must admit.
My wish? At least 30% of the entire Google Fonts catalogue to be variable by 2030. Is that too ambitious? I think not.
Thomas Blogs 