I have two separate FontCreator projects (two FCP files) that share the same family name but are completely different designs. I would like to merge them into one font family with two styles: Regular and Bold.
Is it sufficient to just unify the family name and set the subfamily names, or are there other properties (Naming, OS/2, Style Map, etc.) that I need to adjust to ensure Adobe and Office applications correctly recognize both styles?
If I manually fill in all naming fields, should I enable “Generate the following naming fields” or leave it off?
I want to make sure that Regular is treated as the master style and Bold as the branch, so everything works correctly in Adobe and Office software.
You don’t necessarily need to merge the two projects into one. You can also keep them as two separate FCP files – just make sure they share the same Family Name, while the Style Name differs and reflects the actual style (e.g. Regular, Bold). Also check the Weight Class and Width Class values, and if you like, update PANOSE to reflect the weight difference.
If you want to go a step further, you could add a global Weight axis to both fonts and set their Axis Values like this:
This way Adobe and Office applications will properly recognize them as belonging to the same family, with Regular being the base style and Bold its counterpart.
Another option is to merge them into a single Variable Font with a Weight axis. That makes it easier to maintain OpenType layout features since all lookups are shared. You can find more details here: How to make a variable font
If the outlines are not compatible, as in your case, you could check the Discrete option. This option is used to determine whether an axis is part of interpolation or not. It can be used to design a font family as one variable font, while on exporting it is divided into separate variable fonts, so all discrete axes become global.
As for the “Generate the following naming fields” option: if you’ve manually filled in all naming fields, you can leave this unchecked. It is usually easier to allow FontCreator to automatically generate them for you.