It started somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle of Erwin Wurm’s Fat cars, old woodtype specimen, and the then – we’re talking 2017, it has been some time – brand new possibility of animating variable fonts. It's named after an 18th-century French hairdo or a small footrest.

Pouf comes in three stages: inflated, somewhat normal, and deflated, renamed as compressed, normal, and expanded. The single characters share the same horizontal metrics across all masters, so they sit in the same place when animated. It is fully variable, so it can be animated!

The current version supports Latin Extended to the best of its knowledge.

Even for the most wobbly letters, rhythm is key. While Pouf is most likely to be used with shorter amounts of text, it creates an entertaining rhythm on longer reads.

It works surprisingly well when it is necessary to set more than one word in a font size slightly below 5000pt. Especially on tough topics like air pressure.

I have a weak spot for .notdef glyphs. The .notdef character indicates if a glyph is missing from a font. It represents all that are missing or yet to be drawn.
 After the Microsoft recommendations, they should not be special but clearly recognisable. Publishing Pouf as an ongoing project means the .notdefs are an essential part of the process. They will change with every version update. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

The scope keeps expanding, but here it is for now.

It is scary to publish half-finished projects, but it's also a big relief. The next update is just a release calendar request away. Big thanks go out to FutureFonts, the most awesome platform and team for this kind of endeavour.

Pouf
Retail typeface on FutureFonts
Published 2022 / Updates ongoing