How to make a condensed or extended font

Making a condensed or extended font is a matter of changing the width of every letter while keeping the stroke weight sensible. In Font by Zaweba the Width operation in the style stack does it with one slider: 0.5 gives a condensed font half the normal width, 1.8 gives an extended one nearly twice as wide. Spacing and kerning are redone automatically after the change.

This guide covers the steps and the small adjustments that make a narrow or wide font look properly designed.

What to decide first

Decide what the font is for. Condensed type is the answer when space is tight: headlines in narrow columns, labels on small packaging, signs with lots of words. Extended type suits short, confident text: a logo, a shop name, a heading of two or three words.

Decide on a weight range too. Narrow letters with heavy strokes can close up, and wide letters with thin strokes can look weak. Knowing roughly where you want to land saves time.

Narrowing or widening, in order

Open Font by Zaweba and choose a starting preset. Plain or Bold Plain is the cleanest base for a width change; Slab works well if you want a condensed poster face.

In the style stack, find Width and move the slider. Go below 1 for condensed, above 1 for extended. Watch the live preview with a real word in it.

Adjust weight to match. A condensed font usually needs the weight eased down a little so the counters, the spaces inside letters like o and e, stay open. An extended font can take a bit more weight to look solid.

Look at the spacing. Font redoes it after every change, so you start with a sensible fit. If text looks loose or tight overall, the overall letter spacing slider nudges everything together. If a single pair looks wrong, use the kerning pair editor to fix it and lock it.

Scan the glyphs grid for awkward letters. Wide letters like M and W and narrow ones like i and l react differently to a width change, and it's quicker to spot them in the grid than in text.

Then name the font and export it as TTF, OTF and WOFF2.

Fine tuning for a better result

Contrast can help a condensed font. Narrow letters have tall verticals and short horizontals, and a little contrast to thin the horizontals keeps them from looking crowded. Try small moves on the contrast slider.

Watch round letters at extremes. At very narrow widths, O and C can look like slots; at very wide widths they become broad ovals. Both are fine as long as they look intentional next to straight letters.

Check several sizes. A condensed font that looks elegant at 200 can feel cramped at 12, and an extended font might set too few words per line for comfortable reading.

Making a family of widths

Width is a single setting, so it's easy to make a set. Design your font at normal width and save the project as a .zfont file. Then change the width, give the font a new family name in the font settings, and export again. Repeat for a condensed and an extended version. Because every version comes from the same stack, the letter shapes match, and you'll have a small family of widths for headlines, labels and body text.

It's a quick way to get the kind of flexibility that big type families offer, using only one slider and a few exports.