Here in the US designers usually refer to them as “optical weights” or “optical sizes”.

And Jasper, I’d like to make a case for naming the different sizes with their number. FF Clifford does this, and IMO it’s the only hint a lot of designers is ever going to get for intended use.

There are grades, and there are optical sizes. See this thread:
Confused about possible overlap between grades & optical sizes. Also:
List of graded typefaces
List of typefaces with optical sizes

The same idea is the basis of Tabac as well, just as an information bit, if you need a reference.

If it's not about size, and it's not about gain, then we do indeed need a new term. Rotis comes to mind: it uses "semi" to mean "not really"; in the serif pair it means semi-serif, while in the sans pair it means "sans with contrast" (since in oldschool terminology "sans" means no serifs and no contrast). But it sounds like you have a gradation going, so you need a scalable term - maybe "contrast grade", or "CG" for short; you might suffix "CGn" where "n" is an integer. Or maybe dump the "G" from the suffix.

hhp

It's not an "optical" idea, not is it grading.
Optical variants adjust for a variable such as size or letterspacing.
Grading variants adjust for press gain.

But what you are doing doesn't adjust for anything, it is purely stylistic.

As such, you are working with a stylistic axis.

Other stylistic axes are of course weight, horizontal scaling, and slant—as in the famous Univers family chart.

Since then, following the metafont/multiple master idea, other axes have been explored.
For instance, Chalet proposes a fashion axis.
Penumbra has a serific axis.
Carl Crossgrove invented an axis of agitation with Reliq.
I explored the axis of oldstyle/modern, with Sense and Sensibility at the extremes.

What you have is an axis of contrast.

Another term for an axis might be a scale, but scaling is used in typography to mean "making bigger or smaller".

Admittedly, any Multiple Mastering/tweening — including optical sizing and grading — is done along a design axis.
But I think that if you identify your fonts as variants along the stylistic axis of contrast, that is quite clear about what they are, and distinguishes them from opticals or grades.

Or just call them contrasts (as one would refer to weights), e.g. Jasper Low Contrast, Jasper Medium Contrast, and Jasper High Contrast.

Thanks guys!

Dunwich, that's what I want to get rid off.

Frode, Giving them a number will imply the idea of optical sizes. I want to make clear that the low contrast variants also work great at display sizes. I will however, make a list of the MINIMUM pnt sizes each variant can be used. I've just made a large pdf to work that out for myself :-)

Florian, I guess the term 'optical grade' was wrong to start with?

Flooce, I never noticed that. It's good to know I'm not the only one with this idea :-)

Hrant, Yes. That's the direction I was heading in. Though I still fear that 'contrast grades' is too much like 'grades'. I say, dump the G from the suffix, and dump the Grade from the term :-)

Mr. Shinn, I would say a normal (non-typographic person would say these are grades, but in the complicated and confusing terminology of typography, it's not grading indeed. I think 'contrasts' is just what I was looking for!

Is there any objective for using 'Contrast 1' instead of 'low contrast'? With a total of 9 grades it's gonna be hard to figure out the names of everything between 'high contrast' and 'low contrast'.

"variants along the stylistic axis of contrast" Just wonderful!

Thanks a lot!

The categorical distinction between "Contrasts" and "Opticals/Grades" is apparent if you consider that it would be possible to make Optical or Graded variants of your Contrasts.

I'm not sure how this would be achieved in practice, but theoretically:

Because press gain adds an even amount to both x and y dimension, it shifts contrast and changes horizontal/vertical proportions. Therefore if you wanted to maintain the same contrast in different press situations, you would indeed have to make graded versions of your different contrasts.

Also, you would have to shrink the heavier grades in size.

It would be a better practice to say, "when press gain is heavy, use Contrast 7, Grade 1", rather than "…use Contrast 8 because it will look like Contrast 7".

There doesn't appear to be a standard terminology for grading: H&FJ (e.g. Chronicle), FB (e.g. Benton) and Typotheque (e.g. Greta) have different approaches.

> press gain adds an even amount to both x and y dimension

Not necessarily. Maybe not even typically.

hhp

How so?
Surely ink spreads in all directions, evenly?
What could possibly affect it otherwise, the grain of paper?

Dunno, but it has to have been measured and collated and whatnot and have learned essays written about it.

Yes, the grain, but also any "push" the press might have. For example on the Vandercook I've used for letterpress, laying down the type in the "wrong" direction produces different results.

And check out this example from a low-grade Armenian newspaper:

hhp

Interesting!

However, for practical purposes, wouldn't one assume that grading should be evenly applied across x and y?

The alternative would be to provide grades of the grades, for differential x and y distortions.

**

Might not the distortion in the Armenian newspaper be the result of hinting issues?

I do agree that not knowing any specifics, one should treat the two axes equally.

Hinting? Seems unlikely.
And look at those faint horizontal lines in the background:
clearly the paper has a directional preference of some sort.

hhp

Aye, sure looks like the paper has veins in it.