---
name: Named instance
slug: named-instance
category: typography
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A specific point in a variable font's design space that the designer
  has given a style name, so it can be picked like an ordinary weight.
aliases:
  - name: instance
  - name: static instance
  - name: predefined instance
tags:
  - fonts
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - font-weight
    - variable-font
    - variation-axis
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: Designing with Variable Fonts
    url: https://variablefonts.io/about-variable-fonts/
  - title: Variations (FontLab manual)
    url: https://help.fontlab.com/fontlab/7/manual/Variable-Fonts/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: picking a named style out of a variable font
---

A [variable font](/variable-font) is a continuum. Along its
[variation axis](/variation-axis) for weight every value from 100 to 900 exists and
is drawable, which is a lot of freedom and no vocabulary at all. So the designer
plants flags: this point is Light, this one is Regular, this one Semibold, this one
Black. Each flag is a named instance, a coordinate in the design space plus a name
for it, recorded in the font's own tables. Named instances are what a font menu
lists, what a design tool's style dropdown offers, and what `@font-face` rules and
CSS keywords resolve to. They are also what a static export produces: pick an
instance, cut it out of the variable file, and you have the single-weight font
files the family used to ship as.

The important thing about the flags is how few there are. A weight axis running
100 to 900 holds 801 integer positions, and a typical family names nine of them.
Everything between the flags is real, renderable type that no name reaches. Ask
for `font-variation-settings: 'wght' 520` and the font answers with a drawing that
sits between Medium and Semibold, and there is nothing to call it. That gap is not
a defect. It is the whole reason the format exists: a headline can be tuned until
it optically matches the paragraph under it, and a weight can be interpolated
during an animation, neither of which a list of nine files can do.

The names are worth respecting anyway, for two reasons. They are the family's own
editorial judgment about which points are useful, usually spaced so that adjacent
steps are distinguishable at text sizes rather than evenly spaced in axis units.
And they are the interoperable currency: a named instance survives a handoff, an
export, a font menu, and a colleague's machine, while `'wght' 520` survives only
as long as someone keeps typing it. In CSS the bridge is
[font-weight](/font-weight), whose keywords and numbers map onto the weight axis
directly, so `font-weight: 600` usually lands exactly on the instance the family
calls Semibold.

Two traps. First, an instance name is not a guarantee of position: one family's
Semibold is 600, another's is 620, and a third calls 600 Demi. Read the font's
table, do not assume the ladder. Second, a named instance can pin more than one
axis at once. A family with weight and [optical size](/optical-size) axes may name
a point Caption Bold, meaning a specific weight and a specific optical size
together, and picking it sets both. Asking for the weight alone leaves the other
axis wherever the file's default put it, which is how text set at display optical
size ends up in a caption.