The primary focus of Levien's work and research is in the varied areas regarding the theory of imaging—that is, rendering pictures and fonts for electronic display, which in addition to being aesthetically and mathematically important also contribute to the accessibility and search-openness of the web.
He also created Gill, the GNOME desktop illustration application which aimed at supporting the W3C SVG standard for Vector Graphics.
In 2009, Levien completed a PhD thesis entitled 'From Spiral to Spline: Optimal Techniques in Interactive Curve Design'[5] and published a standalone essay on the mathematical history of Elastica.
[6] Here, his experience with typographical technology, history and industry[5] helped to shape the development of this growing resource, though he has since moved on from the project to work on Android fonts and text layout.
Most Inconsolata (the monospaced font mentioned above) is drawn using G4-continuous splines, which are a very close approximation to the Minimum Variation Curve of Henry Moreton.
Due to this, Advogato has added a syndication feature that includes the weblogs of its current certified developer base.
Levien played a small part in precipitating the relaxation of the US crypto export legislation, by filing for a Commodities Jurisdiction Request for a T-shirt containing an implementation of the RSA encryption algorithm, in four lines of Perl.