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62-569: Popular fonts in the Google Fonts library include Roboto , Open Sans , Lato , Oswald , Montserrat , and Source Sans Pro . Google Fonts was launched in 2010 and revamped in 2011, 2016, and 2020. On March 3, 2020, Google updated the catalog website with support for variable fonts . On March 2, 2021, the Google Fonts team announced they were adding support for open source icons. As of November 2024, Google Fonts had 1731 font families, including 442 variable font families. The library

124-451: A "hodgepodge" of different typographic styles which do not work well together. Coles later commented positively on the redesign and stated that it corrected many problems of the initial release. Sans-serif#Classification In typography and lettering , a sans-serif , sans serif ( / ˈ s æ n ( z ) ˈ s ɛ r ɪ f / ), gothic , or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called " serifs " at

186-417: A device for emphasis , due to their typically blacker type color . For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into three or four major groups, the fourth being the result of splitting the grotesque category into grotesque and neo-grotesque. This group features most of the early (19th century to early 20th) sans-serif designs. Influenced by Didone serif typefaces of

248-643: A lower-case 'L' with a curl or 'i' with serif under the dot. A particular subgenre of sans-serifs is those such as Rothbury, Britannic , Radiant , and National Trust with obvious variation in stroke width. These have been called 'modulated', 'stressed' or 'high-contrast' sans-serifs. They are nowadays often placed within the humanist genre, although they predate Johnston which started the modern humanist genre. These may take inspiration from sources outside printing such as brush lettering or calligraphy. Letters without serifs have been common in writing across history, for example in casual, non-monumental epigraphy of

310-522: A more unified range of styles than on previous designs, allowing a wider range of text to be set artistically through setting headings and body text in a single family. The style of design using asymmetric layouts, Helvetica and a grid layout extensively has been called the Swiss or International Typographic Style . This gallery presents images of sans-serif lettering and type across different times and places from early to recent. Particular attention

372-575: A result, printing done in the Latin alphabet for the first three hundred and fifty years of printing was "serif" in style, whether in blackletter , roman type , italic or occasionally script . The earliest printing typefaces which omitted serifs were not intended to render contemporary texts, but to represent inscriptions in Ancient Greek and Etruscan . Thus, Thomas Dempster 's De Etruria regali libri VII (1723), used special types intended for

434-775: A spurred "G" and an "R" with a curled leg. Capitals tend to be of relatively uniform width. Cap height and ascender height are generally the same to produce a more regular effect in texts such as titles with many capital letters, and descenders are often short for tighter line spacing. They often avoid having a true italic in favor of a more restrained oblique or sloped design, although at least some sans-serif true italics were offered. Examples of grotesque typefaces include Akzidenz-Grotesk , Venus , News Gothic , Franklin Gothic , IBM Plex and Monotype Grotesque . Akzidenz Grotesk Old Face, Knockout, Grotesque No. 9 and Monotype Grotesque are examples of digital fonts that retain more of

496-417: A strong impact internationally: Helvetica came to be the most used typeface for the following decades. Geometric sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes, like near-perfect circles and squares. Common features are a nearly-circular capital 'O', sharp and pointed uppercase 'N' vertices, and a "single-storey" lowercase letter 'a'. The 'M' is often splayed and the capitals of varying width, following

558-409: A study of Schelter & Giesecke specimens; Mosley describes this as "thoroughly discredited"; even in 1986 Walter Tracy described the claimed dates as "on stylistic grounds   ... about forty years too early". Sans-serif lettering and typefaces were popular due to their clarity and legibility at distance in advertising and display use, when printed very large or small. Because sans-serif type

620-613: A typeface expressly designed to be suitable for both display and body text. Some humanist designs may be more geometric, as in Gill Sans and Johnston (especially their capitals), which like Roman capitals are often based on perfect squares, half-squares and circles, with considerable variation in width. These somewhat architectural designs may feel too stiff for body text. Others such as Syntax , Goudy Sans and Sassoon Sans more resemble handwriting, serif typefaces or calligraphy. Frutiger , from 1976, has been particularly influential in

682-466: Is a monospace font based on Roboto. It is available in seven weights: thin, extra-light, light, regular, medium, semi-bold and bold, with oblique stylings for each weight. Roboto Serif is a companion typeface with serifs designed by Greg Gazdowicz of Commercial Type . It was debuted in 2022 to fill the serif niche. Roboto Slab is a slab serif font based on Roboto. It was introduced in March 2013, as

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744-564: Is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google as the system font for its mobile operating system Android , and released in 2011 for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" . The entire font family has been licensed under the Apache license . In 2014, Roboto was redesigned for Android 5.0 "Lollipop" . Roboto is the default system font on Android , and since 2013, other Google services such as Google Play , YouTube , Google Maps , Google Images , and more. In 2017, Roboto

806-582: Is also distributed by Monotype 's SkyFonts and Adobe's Edge Web Fonts and Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) services. In February 2022, a German court ruled that a website using Google Fonts violated the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by passing personally identifiable information ( IP address ) to Google without the user's consent or a legitimate interest in doing so. Roboto Roboto ( / r oʊ ˈ b ɒ t . oʊ / )

868-512: Is also offered in a wider range of font weights , adding Thin (100), Medium (500), and Black (900) alongside Light (300), Regular (400), and Bold (700). Roboto supports Latin , Greek (partial) and Cyrillic scripts. On Android, the Noto fonts are used for languages not supported by Roboto, including Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese , Korean , Thai and Hindi (as of January 2014), and Droid fonts as of 2008. Roboto Mono

930-562: Is called Egyptian Characters ". Around 1816, the Ordnance Survey began to use 'Egyptian' lettering, monoline sans-serif capitals, to mark ancient Roman sites. This lettering was printed from copper plate engraving. Around 1816, William Caslon IV produced the first sans-serif printing type in England for the Latin alphabet, a capitals-only face under the title 'Two Lines English Egyptian' , where 'Two Lines English' referred to

992-597: Is maintained through Google Fonts' GitHub repository, where all font files can be obtained directly. Source files for many of the fonts are available from git repositories within the Google Fonts' GitHub organization, along with libre software tools used by the Google Fonts community. Most of the fonts are released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, while some are released under the Apache License ; both are libre licenses. The font library

1054-584: Is not a conventional feature on grotesque and neo-grotesque designs. Due to the diversity of sans-serif typefaces, many do not exactly fit into the above categories. For example, Neuzeit S has both neo-grotesque and geometric influences, as does Hermann Zapf 's URW Grotesk . Whitney blends humanist and grotesque influences, while Klavika is a geometric design not based on the circle. Sans-serif typefaces intended for signage, such as Transport and Tern (both used on road signs), may have unusual features to enhance legibility and differentiate characters, such as

1116-448: Is that sans-serifs are based on either " fat face typefaces " or slab-serifs with the serifs removed. It is now known that the inspiration was more classical antiquity, and sans-serifs appeared before the first dated appearance of slab-serif letterforms in 1810. The Schelter & Giesecke foundry also claimed during the 1920s to have been offering a sans-serif with lower-case by 1825. Wolfgang Homola dated it in 2004 to 1882 based on

1178-514: The classical model . The geometric sans originated in Germany in the 1920s. Two early efforts in designing geometric types were made by Herbert Bayer and Jakob Erbar , who worked respectively on Universal Typeface (unreleased at the time but revived digitally as Architype Bayer ) and Erbar ( c.  1925 ). In 1927 Futura , by Paul Renner , was released to great acclaim and popularity. Geometric sans-serif typefaces were popular from

1240-476: The neo-grotesque genre of sans-serif typefaces. It includes Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black weights with matching oblique styles rather than true italics. It also includes condensed styles in Light, Regular and Bold, also with matching oblique designs. In 2014, Matias Duarte announced at Google I/O that Roboto was significantly redesigned for Android 5.0 "Lollipop" . Punctuation marks and

1302-418: The tittles in the lowercase "i" and "j" were changed from square to rounded, the bottom surface of the top part of the number "1" points downwards instead of horizontal, the tail part of the numbers "6" and "9" have been slightly shortened (in resemblance to " Trebuchet MS "), and the entire typeface was made “slightly wider and rounder” with many changes in details. The newly-redesigned version of Roboto

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1364-505: The "astonishing" effect the unusual style had on the public. The lettering style apparently became referred to as "old Roman" or "Egyptian" characters, referencing the classical past and a contemporary interest in Ancient Egypt and its blocky, geometric architecture. Mosley writes that "in 1805 Egyptian letters were happening in the streets of London, being plastered over shops and on walls by signwriters, and they were astonishing

1426-777: The (generally wider) slab serif and "fat faces" of the period. It also added a lower-case. The term "grotesque" comes from the Italian word for cave , and was often used to describe Roman decorative styles found by excavation, but had long become applied in the modern sense for objects that appeared "malformed or monstrous". The term "grotesque" became commonly used to describe sans-serifs. Similar condensed sans-serif display typefaces, often capitals-only, became very successful. Sans-serif printing types began to appear thereafter in France and Germany. A few theories about early sans-serifs now known to be incorrect may be mentioned here. One

1488-430: The 1920s and 1930s due to their clean, modern design, and many new geometric designs and revivals have been developed since. Notable geometric types of the period include Kabel , Semplicità , Bernhard Gothic , Nobel and Metro ; more recent designs in the style include ITC Avant Garde , Brandon Grotesque , Gotham , Avenir , Product Sans , HarmonyOS Sans and Century Gothic . Many geometric sans-serif alphabets of

1550-457: The Egyptians had no letters, you will doubtless conceive must be curious. They are simply the common characters, deprived of all beauty and all proportion by having all the strokes of equal thickness, so that those which should be thin look as if they had the elephantiasis." Similarly, the painter Joseph Farington wrote in his diary on 13 September 1805 of seeing a memorial engraved "in what

1612-477: The Futura, Erbar and Kabel tradition include Bank Gothic , DIN 1451 , Eurostile and Handel Gothic , along with many of the typefaces designed by Ray Larabie . Humanist sans-serif typefaces take inspiration from traditional letterforms, such as Roman square capitals , traditional serif typefaces and calligraphy. Many have true italics rather than an oblique , ligatures and even swashes in italic. One of

1674-531: The Theater as the Highest Symbol of a Culture), by Peter Behrens , in 1900. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sans-serif types were viewed with suspicion by many printers, especially those of fine book printing , as being fit only for advertisements (if that), and to this day most books remain printed in serif typefaces as body text. This impression would not have been helped by

1736-549: The classical period. However, Roman square capitals , the inspiration for much Latin-alphabet lettering throughout history, had prominent serifs. While simple sans-serif letters have always been common in "uncultured" writing and sometimes even in epigraphy, such as basic handwriting, most artistically-authored letters in the Latin alphabet, both sculpted and printed, since the Middle Ages have been inspired by fine calligraphy, blackletter writing and Roman square capitals . As

1798-668: The condensed forms of the contemporary sans cuttings of the last thirty years." Leading type designer Adrian Frutiger wrote in 1961 on designing a new face, Univers , on the nineteenth-century model: "Some of these old sans-serifs have had a real renaissance within the last twenty years, once the reaction of the 'New Objectivity' had been overcome. A purely geometrical form of type is unsustainable." Of this period in Britain, Mosley has commented that in 1960 "orders unexpectedly revived" for Monotype's eccentric Monotype Grotesque design: "[it] represents, even more evocatively than Univers,

1860-470: The default font in Google's note-taking service Google Keep . (The font was changed to the sans-serif Roboto in 2018.) It is available in four weights: thin, light, regular and bold. However, no oblique versions were released for it. In November 2019, the typeface was updated and added 5 new weights: Extra-Light, Medium, Semi-Bold, Extra-Bold and Black, and a variable font axis ranging from 100 to 900. It also

1922-481: The design was "cruder but much larger" than its predecessor, making it a success. Thereafter sans-serif capitals rapidly began to be issued from London typefounders. Much imitated was the Thorowgood "grotesque" face of the early 1830s. This was arrestingly bold and highly condensed, quite unlike the classical proportions of Caslon's design, but very suitable for poster typography and similar in aesthetic effect to

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1984-920: The development of the modern humanist sans genre, especially designs intended to be particularly legible above all other design considerations. The category expanded greatly during the 1980s and 1990s, partly as a reaction against the overwhelming popularity of Helvetica and Univers and also due to the need for legible computer fonts on low-resolution computer displays. Designs from this period intended for print use include FF Meta , Myriad , Thesis , Charlotte Sans , Bliss , Skia and Scala Sans , while designs developed for computer use include Microsoft's Tahoma , Trebuchet , Verdana , Calibri and Corbel , as well as Lucida Grande , Fira Sans and Droid Sans . Humanist sans-serif designs can (if appropriately proportioned and spaced) be particularly suitable for use on screen or at distance, since their designs can be given wide apertures or separation between strokes, which

2046-603: The earliest humanist designs was Edward Johnston 's Johnston typeface from 1916, and, a decade later, Gill Sans ( Eric Gill , 1928). Edward Johnston, a calligrapher by profession, was inspired by classic letter forms, especially the capital letters on the Column of Trajan . Humanist designs vary more than gothic or geometric designs. Some humanist designs have stroke modulation (strokes that clearly vary in width along their line) or alternating thick and thin strokes. These include most popularly Hermann Zapf 's Optima (1958),

2108-462: The early twentieth century, an increase in popularity of sans-serif typefaces took place as more artistic sans-serif designs were released. While he disliked sans-serif typefaces in general, the American printer J. L. Frazier wrote of Copperplate Gothic in 1925 that "a certain dignity of effect accompanies   ... due to the absence of anything in the way of frills", making it a popular choice for

2170-409: The eccentricities of some of the early sans-serif types. According to Monotype, the term "grotesque" originates from Italian : grottesco , meaning "belonging to the cave" due to their simple geometric appearance. The term arose because of adverse comparisons that were drawn with the more ornate Modern Serif and Roman typefaces that were the norm at the time. Neo-grotesque designs appeared in

2232-432: The end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism . For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque , § Neo-grotesque , § Geometric , § Humanist , and § Other or mixed . Sans-serif typefaces have become

2294-450: The fallback Roboto glyphs and outlines. This exception was removed in 2020 after Roboto was re-licensed from Apache to OFL. Inter also has an experimental "Display" version, a font which has less letter spacing and has linear endings of letters. Another variant with similar purpose, Inter Tight, is specifically designed for Google Workspace and other applications that do not support control over letter spacing . The latter variant shares

2356-454: The font as part of Android 14, though there are no official plans to switch the default system font from Roboto to Roboto Flex. Heebo is an extension of Roboto that includes Hebrew characters . Inter was designed in 2016 by Rasmus Andersson who wanted a font that was easier to read on computer screens than Roboto while retaining its vertical proportions. Earlier versions of Inter (then "Interface" and "Inter UI") included glyphs and followed

2418-399: The font is not used in main network presentation. The United Nations uses Roboto on its website and in official documents. Android's previous system typeface, Droid Sans , was designed for the low-resolution displays of early Android devices, and did not display well in larger, higher-resolution screens of later models. It was decided that a more modern typeface, designed from scratch,

2480-405: The fresh revolutionary breeze that began to blow through typography in the early sixties" and "its rather clumsy design seems to have been one of the chief attractions to iconoclastic designers tired of the   ... prettiness of Gill Sans". By the 1960s, neo-grotesque typefaces such as Univers and Helvetica had become popular through reviving the nineteenth-century grotesques while offering

2542-465: The initial release (i.e., before the Android 5.0 redesign) received mixed reviews. Joshua Topolsky , Editor-In-Chief of technology news and media network The Verge , describes the typeface as "clean and modern, but not overly futuristic – not a science fiction font". However, typography commentator Stephen Coles of Typographica called the initial release "a Four-headed Frankenfont", describing it as

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2604-590: The leading expert on early revival of sans-serif letters, has found that architect John Soane commonly used sans-serif letters on his drawings and architectural designs. Soane's inspiration was apparently the inscriptions dedicating the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy , with minimal serifs. These were then copied by other artists, and in London sans-serif capitals became popular for advertising, apparently because of

2666-491: The mid-twentieth century as an evolution of grotesque types. They are relatively straightforward in appearance with limited stroke width variation. Similar to grotesque typefaces, neo-grotesques often feature capitals of uniform width and a quite 'folded-up' design, in which strokes (for example on the 'c') are curved all the way round to end on a perfect horizontal or vertical. Helvetica is an example of this. Unlike earlier grotesque designs, many were issued in large families from

2728-532: The most prevalent for display of text on computer screens. On lower-resolution digital displays, fine details like serifs may disappear or appear too large. The term comes from the French word sans , meaning "without" and "serif" of uncertain origin, possibly from the Dutch word schreef meaning "line" or pen-stroke. In printed media, they are more commonly used for display use and less for body text . Before

2790-607: The period and sign painting traditions, these were often quite solid, bold designs suitable for headlines and advertisements. The early sans-serif typefaces often did not feature a lower case or italics , since they were not needed for such uses. They were sometimes released by width, with a range of widths from extended to normal to condensed, with each style different, meaning to modern eyes they can look quite irregular and eccentric. Grotesque typefaces have limited variation of stroke width (often none perceptible in capitals). The terminals of curves are usually horizontal, and many have

2852-613: The period, such as those authored by the Bauhaus art school (1919–1933) and modernist poster artists, were hand-lettered and not cut into metal type at the time. A separate inspiration for many types described "geometric" in design has been the simplified shapes of letters engraved or stenciled on metal and plastic in industrial use, which often follow a simplified structure and are sometimes known as "rectilinear" for their use of straight vertical and horizontal lines. Designs which have been called geometric in principles but not descended from

2914-473: The public, who had never seen letters like them and were not sure they wanted to". A depiction of the style, as an engraving, rather than printed from type, was shown in the European Magazine of 1805, described as "old Roman" characters. However, the style did not become used in printing for some more years. (Early sans-serif signage was not printed from type but hand-painted or carved, since at

2976-662: The representation of Etruscan epigraphy , and in c.  1745 , the Caslon foundry made Etruscan types for pamphlets written by Etruscan scholar John Swinton . Another niche used of a printed sans-serif letterform from 1786 onwards was a rounded sans-serif script typeface developed by Valentin Haüy for the use of the blind to read with their fingers. Towards the end of the eighteenth century neoclassicism led to architects increasingly incorporating ancient Greek and Roman designs in contemporary structures. Historian James Mosley ,

3038-582: The same glyph shapes as Inter, while the former contains redesigned glyphs which will be introduced in a future version of Inter. The Apple system font San Francisco is similar to the Inter font. Piboto is a forked version of Roboto, including the original character styles as used before the 2014 redesign. It is specifically designed and currently the system font of Raspberry Pi OS (then Raspbian) as part of their desktop UI redesign. Google developed Roboto to be "modern, yet approachable" and "emotional," but

3100-797: The spirit of modernity, using the German slogan " die Schrift unserer Zeit " ("the typeface of our time") and in English "the typeface of today and tomorrow" ; many typefaces were released under its influence as direct clones, or at least offered with alternate characters allowing them to imitate it if desired. In the post-war period, an increase of interest took place in "grotesque" sans-serifs. Writing in The Typography of Press Advertisement (1956), printer Kenneth Day commented that Stephenson Blake's eccentric Grotesque series had returned to popularity for having "a personality sometimes lacking in

3162-450: The standard of common sans-serif types of the period, many of which now seem somewhat lumpy and eccentrically-shaped. In 1922, master printer Daniel Berkeley Updike described sans-serif typefaces as having "no place in any artistically respectable composing-room." In 1937 he stated that he saw no need to change this opinion in general, though he felt that Gill Sans and Futura were the best choices if sans-serifs had to be used. Through

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3224-533: The stationery of professionals such as lawyers and doctors. As Updike's comments suggest, the new, more constructed humanist and geometric sans-serif designs were viewed as increasingly respectable, and were shrewdly marketed in Europe and America as embodying classic proportions (with influences of Roman capitals) while presenting a spare, modern image. Futura in particular was extensively marketed by Bauer and its American distribution arm by brochure as capturing

3286-482: The term "sans-serif" became standard in English typography, a number of other terms had been used. One of these terms for sans-serif was "grotesque", often used in Europe, and " gothic ", which is still used in East Asian typography and sometimes seen in typeface names like News Gothic , Highway Gothic , Franklin Gothic or Trade Gothic . Sans-serif typefaces are sometimes, especially in older documents, used as

3348-570: The time it was not possible to print in large sizes. This makes tracing the descent of sans-serif styles hard, since a trend can arrive in the dated, printed record from a signpainting tradition which has left less of a record or at least no dates.) The inappropriateness of the name was not lost on the poet Robert Southey , in his satirical Letters from England written in the character of a Spanish aristocrat. It commented: "The very shopboards must be   ... painted in Egyptian letters, which, as

3410-492: The time of release. Neo-grotesque type began in the 1950s with the emergence of the International Typographic Style , or Swiss style. Its members looked at the clear lines of Akzidenz-Grotesk (1898) as an inspiration for designs with a neutral appearance and an even colour on the page. In 1957 the release of Helvetica , Univers , and Folio , the first typefaces categorized as neo-grotesque, had

3472-447: The typeface's body size, which equals to about 28 points. Although it is known from its appearances in the firm's specimen books, no uses of it from the period have been found; Mosley speculates that it may have been commissioned by a specific client. A second hiatus in interest in sans-serif appears to have lasted for about twelve years, until Vincent Figgins ' foundry of London issued a new sans-serif in 1828. David Ryan felt that

3534-439: The vertical glyph metrics (ascender and descender) from Roboto, while Roboto glyphs were included as a fallback for characters which have not been (re-)designed in Inter. Inter changed its vertical glyph metrics since 2018, making it different from that of Roboto. Due to this condition, the typeface had to be released in two combined licenses: the SIL Open Font License for original glyph designs for Inter and Apache License for

3596-526: The weight axis. Roboto Flex supports Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters. Roboto Flex was still not used as the default system font in Android, potentially replacing classic Roboto. Meanwhile, Google started to use Google Sans Text as the default system font for Android system apps (e.g. Settings) in Google Pixel devices, following other Android OEMs who introduce custom fonts to their system apps. The Android source code has been updated to include

3658-462: Was modified with some characteristics from the sans-serif Roboto and to slightly resemble most slab-serif typefaces, such as "R", "K", "k", "g", "C", "S", etc. Released in 2022, Roboto Flex is the variable font version of Roboto. Roboto Flex has 12 adjustable axes, including optical size . Notably, the static font version of Roboto does not have weights 200 (Extra Light), 600 (Semi Bold), and 800 (Extra Bold), which can be achieved by Roboto Flex via

3720-416: Was needed for the newer displays. The new typeface, Roboto, was designed entirely in-house by Christian Robertson who previously had released an expanded Ubuntu Titling font through his personal type foundry Betatype. The font was officially made available for free download on January 12, 2012, on the newly launched Android Design website. Compared to the humanist sans-serif Droid Sans, Roboto belongs to

3782-543: Was often used for headings and commercial printing, many early sans-serif designs did not feature lower-case letters. Simple sans-serif capitals, without use of lower-case, became very common in uses such as tombstones of the Victorian period in Britain. The first use of sans-serif as a running text has been proposed to be the short booklet Feste des Lebens und der Kunst: eine Betrachtung des Theaters als höchsten Kultursymbols (Celebration of Life and Art: A Consideration of

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3844-674: Was used on the LCD countdown clocks of the New York City Subway 's B Division lines. Roboto Bold is the default font in Unreal Engine 4 , and in Kodi . Roboto Condensed is used to display Information on European versions of Nintendo Switch packaging, including physical releases of games. Utsav Network uses Roboto for its wordmark. Since October 2022, Global News has also used Roboto in its on-air presentation, however

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