Forum Discussion
Variable Driven Text Bold Rendering Oddly
I've come across a very strange and specific issue when it comes to how the font Montserrat is being rendered in my project.
I have a master slide, with a layer built into it that automatically shows, so it is overlayed on any assets on the base slide, giving me a top title and branding bar. The title is driven by the variable "Project.SlideTitle". Essentially it makes that part of each slide all automatic.
Setup on the master slide.
Lately, when I publish projects made this way, the title text renders as if each letter could be bold or not.
| Editor (Preview) | Published Version (Review 360) |
You can see that the bold font is fine in the preview, but when published it's like this strange mix of bold and not bold characters. Like the "O" is clearly a different weight than the "e".
So far the only solution has been to just use Montserrat Regular, and forgo any use of bold text.
All other uses of the Montserrat font throughout the project have not had this issue, it's specifically the titles on the master slide, generated by the variable.
I haven't yet tried other fonts, as this project's branding package requires Montserrat.
I've tried different variations of montserrat, like semibold, black, and setting them to bold or not bold, but they all suffer from the same issue.
If anyone has ever come across anything similar, please let me know if you've found a workaround, or if this is simply a bug that needs to be reported.
I did try changing my fonts from variable to static as well, but I'm relatively sure that I had the static versions installed from the start.
And from what I can tell, the variable vs static issue was that the text just wouldn't show up as bold at all, but would look normal otherwise.
This appears to be an issue where the font weights become garbled per letter.
That all being said, I was finally able to get the IT department at my organization to update our Storyline versions to the latest March 3, 2026 version, and the issue seems to be resolved. I can only assume it was related to this fix here:
February 19, 2026 (Build 3.111.36326.0)
Fixed: Built-in variables didn’t display correctly.
I was previously on the February 3, 2026 version.
Thanks for the response though, greatly appreciated!
3 Replies
Hi MatthewMills-20,
Happy to share some insight on this.
Unfortunately, not all Variable fonts are supported by Storyline 360. While these fonts may appear to function while authoring, they will not render properly once published. Our development team is aware of this limitation and has been tracking requests to improve Storyline's handling of Variable fonts. I've shared your feedback directly with them as well!
As a workaround, I suggest uninstalling any Variable instance of Montserrat, then only install the Static version.
- The download link found here includes the Static package.
After that, please relaunch Storyline 360 so the new fonts are updated. Also, you can use Storyline's replace font feature to quickly swap between fonts.
Let me know how it goes!
I did try changing my fonts from variable to static as well, but I'm relatively sure that I had the static versions installed from the start.
And from what I can tell, the variable vs static issue was that the text just wouldn't show up as bold at all, but would look normal otherwise.
This appears to be an issue where the font weights become garbled per letter.
That all being said, I was finally able to get the IT department at my organization to update our Storyline versions to the latest March 3, 2026 version, and the issue seems to be resolved. I can only assume it was related to this fix here:
February 19, 2026 (Build 3.111.36326.0)
Fixed: Built-in variables didn’t display correctly.
I was previously on the February 3, 2026 version.
Thanks for the response though, greatly appreciated!
I'm glad that StevenBenassi was able to solve your issue, MatthewMills-20! Please let us know if there is anything else we can help with.
