erinmclaughlin / robotoslab

Roboto Slab Typeface by Google

Roboto Slab Font Project

by Christian Robertson

Roboto has a dual nature. It has a mechanical skeleton and the forms are largely geometric. At the same time, the font features friendly and open curves. While some grotesks distort their letterforms to force a rigid rhythm, Roboto doesn’t compromise, allowing letters to be settled into their natural width. This makes for a more natural reading rhythm more commonly found in humanist and serif types.

This is the Roboto Slab family, which can be used alongside the normal Roboto family and the Roboto Condensed family.

This project is a fork from the old Google font repository.

Completed tasks:

• Port original binaries to UFO sources with cubic outlines
• use fontmake to build.

Todo:

• Improve README.md
• Get Metadata up to data, add appropriate email address
• Run fonts through Fontbakery and ship fonts.

Building

First you should setup a python virtual environment:

# the name "venv" is used in "scripts/bin/build/sh"
$ virtualenv venv
# activate the virtual environment
$ . ./venv/bin/activate
# install the dependencies
$ pip install -r reguirements.txt

With that in place and with the virtual envronment activated, build the fonts like so:

Masters

$ ./scripts/bin/build.sh

Alternatively, invoke fontmake directly:

$ cd fonts
$ fontmake -m ../sources/RobotoSlab.designspace

Instances

In the designspace document, also some instances are described, this can create font-instances by interploation. However, the masters are not fully compatible and thus the instances are not complete/broken.

$ cd fonts
$ fontmake -m ../sources/RobotoSlab.designpace -i