Living Sans: motion + variant review

Two things to look at. First, how the font behaves across its motion axis (100 → 1800). Second, how each letterform variant animates differently when that axis moves, and what calt does on top. Use the font switcher above to compare Beta 10 against the final release: every specimen on this page re-renders in place.

Final release. The motion axis is renamed MOTN (was wght) and a second axis TRCK (-90 → 0) adds font-level tracking. ss03 is gone; the alphabet's alternates are ss01 and ss02 only. \ now works as an invisible alternate trigger, which is what the Text combos page tests.

Beta 10. Superseded by the final release. Its motion axis is wght, it has no TRCK axis, and \ is an ordinary printing backslash rather than a trigger (only Ω triggers alternates). Four of its glyphs barely move across the axis, which is the "some characters weren't animating" problem the final font fixes: see the motion audit.

Motion range

MOTN 100 → 1800 wght 100 → 1800

One axis drives all the movement. The headline below loops across the full 100 → 1800 range so you can watch the outlines morph; the staircase pins seven sample values along the way. Advance widths do not change across the axis: the motion is entirely internal to the glyphs, so nothing reflows as it animates.

LIVING
100
LIVING
200
LIVING
400
LIVING
700
LIVING
1100
LIVING
1400
LIVING
1800
LIVING
default
Base A–Z glyphs, with calt free to swap in alternates contextually. Every base glyph does carry motion data, but in Beta 10 four of them (I, N, T and L.ss01) move so little they read as static next to their neighbours. The final release redraws all four.
ss01 / ss02
Stylistic-set alternates covering the whole alphabet. Requesting one pins every letter to that set instead of letting calt choose.
ss03
Beta 10 only, and alternates for A, D, L, M and O at that. Its five glyphs carry no motion data at all, so an ss03 letter is always frozen. Removed from the final release.
calt on
Contextual alternates: the browser default. The font picks between base, ss01 and ss02 drawings depending on each letter's neighbours, which is what varies the letterforms within one word.
calt off
font-feature-settings: "calt" 0: contextual swapping disabled, so you see only what the variant column explicitly requests.

Tracking and calt: browsers drop contextual alternates by default the moment CSS letter-spacing is non-zero, which is why naive tracking used to make the letterforms snap back to base shapes. The fix every specimen here uses: force font-feature-settings: "calt" 1 explicitly, which overrides that default. Drag the CSS letter-spacing slider and watch the alternates hold. The final font makes this moot for production work: the TRCK axis tracks the type inside the font, where it cannot disturb the shaping stack at all. Prefer it over CSS letter-spacing.