What is the standard practice for naming instances with multiple styles?

Niteesh Yadav

Hi everyone, I need your guidance to understand what is the standard practice when it comes to naming instances and you have multiple styles in a variable font. Example: I have resolution-based axes and currently I'm using one family name but for instances I have named Regular, Regular Retina, Bold, Bold Retina and so on...
Is this okay or there is a better way to do it? 

Paul Hanslow

Id first identify what your intention is with the typeface and the best method to ensure users understand how each of typeface's weights/styles is intended to be used. For example, for a newspaper text typeface you may have three grades per weight:
Regular - grade 1 2 and 3
Bold - grade 1, 2 and 3
etc etc

so I'd name these 'Regular Grade 1', 'Regular Grade 2', 'Regular Grade 3' to ensure users understand the Regular and Bold are separate weights with three slightly heavier weights than each other. In short, think about the hierarchy of what you're intending to do and to name weights/styles to be transparent rather than confusing.

From what I gather you've got a Retina style. What's it for? What's its intended usage. How is Regular different to Regular Retina? Id want to know this up front if I was to understand what weight/style I needed to purchase.

If you're questioning how to name the instances so they display in the correct order in Indesign and other drop down menus, well, that's a different kettle of fish. 

John Hudson

I have resolution-based axes and currently I'm using one family name but for instances I have named Regular, Regular Retina, Bold, Bold Retina and so on...

Instance naming is fairly flexible, but I would recommend thinking in terms of a hierarchy of family, subfamily, and style linking. For historical reasons, style linking applies in a fairly limited way: regular, italic, bold, and bold italic (RIBBI), and it generally makes sense for those to be the final descriptors in the instance name. So, using your example, I would try something like

Overall Family Name -> Subfamily Name -> [Style Group Name}* -> Linked Style

i.e. Foobar [Regular]**; Foobar Bold, Foobar Retina [Regular], Foobar Retina Bold.

* The Style Group name (which is what FontLab 8 calls it) is the old RIBBI family naming (name ID1 in the OT/TT name table), and you need to group the linking styles under such a name which, if you have more than the basic four weight-style combinations, will be different from the subfamily name.

**The style name ‘Regular’ is elidable in the font Full Name field.