Exposure

Exposure borrows the eponymous principle from photography, using it to question the possibilities offered by variable fonts in a completely original way. While studying at the Atelier national de recherche typographique (Nancy, France), Federico Parra Barrios took a very unique approach to the technique, developing a singular typeface between 2019 and 2022. Available in Roman and Italic, Exposure is a remarkable feat—both technically and in terms of drawing—that shows how other ways of exploiting variable font technology are possible. While variable fonts—which appeared in 2016—are considered to be a major development in typography, the use of axes of variation to modify weight, set-width, and optical size are all transformations inherited from previous techniques. Federico Parra Barrios breaks away from this conventional approach to propose a new way of thinking. Exposure’s axis of variation ranges from –100 to +100, and gives a feeling of adjusting the intensity of the light to which the typeface is exposed, thus affecting its outline. Some might see this as a nod to another, now defunct, technique: phototypesetting. [205.tf]