Web FontFonts: Sans

FF Advert is an idiosyncratic and good-natured sans serif family for text in four weights. Its design is an homage to Metro, W. A. Dwiggins’ humanized geometric sans. The family is appreciated by graphic designers for including two unique lowercase ‘a’ forms in each font: single-story and double-story versions. The typeface is the work of Dutch designer Just van Rossum. A sister design exists... Read More

Because of its linear nature and relative loose fit, FF Alega may be used in a variety of circumstances, producing headlines or even for setting text. When Rückel designed FF Alega, he did not consider adding a serif version. But following the typeface’s release, he experimented with the idea and decided that the effort was worthwhile. FF Alega Serif has a technical look, but is very readable.... Read More

FF Amman was designed in both Latin and Arabic and is one of the very few bi-script families where both the Arabic and the Latin characters were concurrently drawn from scratch by the same designer. It’s also the first typeface of its kind to contain “true Arabic italics,” instead of the much more common oblique versions often paired with the Arabic script. The unconventional family includes... Read More

A popular choice within the FontFont library, FF Clan is an extensive family from Polish designer Łukasz Dziedzic. A contemporary sans with modestly squared curves, FF Clan comprises seven weights across an astonishing six widths. Dziedzic’s strong, readable types feature a large x-height, short descenders, and small caps for all weights. The thin weight is delicate but impactful, ideal for... Read More

Developed over a ten year period, FF Balance is an experimental sans serif that subverts the conventions of the style. Its horizontal strokes are heavier than the verticals and its top strokes appear slightly heavier than the bottom. Another unusual feature is the family’s uniwidth metrics. All weights and numerals of the family... Read More

Matthew Carter’s Verdana was made for screen reading and works brilliantly within that medium. FF Basic Gothic is a response to Verdana in print, where its forms leave generous room for improvement. Influenced by the early sanses of the 19th century and developed for today’s print standards, FF Basic Gothic is a sans serif optimized for maximum legibility. With its functional, basic look, it is... Read More

FF Bau is a large workhorse family of sans serif typefaces drawn in the “Grotesk” genre. Christian Schwartz is its designer, working under the inspiration of Grotesk types cast by the Schelter & Giesecke foundry in Leipzig. Schelter & Giesecke sold these popular Grotesks for many decades; they were first introduced around 1880. When the Bauhaus moved nearby in Dessau in the mid-1920s, these... Read More

FF Bauer Grotesk breathes new digital life into the metal type “Friedrich Bauer Grotesk”, a 1933 release by the Trennert & Sohn type foundry in Hamburg Altona, Germany. Its geometric construction infused with an art déco zeitgeist tied to the era, is closely related to such famous German designs as Futura, Erbar, Kabel and Super Grotesk which a few years earlier. Bauer Grotesk stands out by... Read More

FF Celeste Sans is something of a hybrid, like its serif companion FF Celeste. Its designer Chris Burke describes it like this: “The serif version is a deliberate attempt to temper the modern face (Didone) type model with old face (Garalde) elements; to mix what Swiss letterform theorists have called the static and the dynamic principles of letter construction. Allowing for historical fancy,... Read More

The design of FF Chambers Sans is inspired by very divergent sources. In fact, during its development, designer Verena Gerlach had two styles in mind that work as polar opposites. The first was a traditional, engraved serif from a scientific book printed in 1686. The other is the generic sans serif style found in the lettering on enamel street signs. FF Chambers Sans is an experiment that... Read More

FF Cocon’s designer, Evert Bloemsma (1958–2005) described it as a “serious typeface.” Despite first impressions, the description holds up well. Since its 2001 release, FF Cocon has been used in an astoundingly wide variety of design applications. At large sizes, FF Cocon works as a display face, with beautiful detailing. And at small sizes, it remains surprisingly readable. The lowercase... Read More

FF Dagny is a spare sans serif drawn in the “grotesk” style. In 2002, Sweden’s largest daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) changed from broadsheet to tabloid format. The switch accompanied a major change in DN’s journalism, editing and design. Mario García of García Media had just redesigned DN two years previously in 2000. Pangea design’s Creative Director, Örjan Nordling, who had worked with... Read More

FF Dax is without doubt Hans Reichel’s magnum opus. The design is a contemporary streamlined sans in three widths: normal, wide, and condensed. Suprisingly, FF Dax Condensed was the first to be released, in 1995. The concept behind the typeface was to combine the clarity of a condensed Futura with a more humanist touch. The result is a space saving and legible typeface of timeless quality. The... Read More

The aim with this enhancement of Hans Reichel’s mega-popular FF Dax typeface was to balance the contrast so that the letters would work better in long texts at small point sizes. FF Daxline is wider than its predecessor, and the capitals are larger. There is even a lighter version than light: thin. The result is a much more consistent, versatile family without abandoning the distinctive... Read More

On the way back to the airport from the 1994 ATypI conference in San Francisco, Albert-Jan Pool and Erik Spiekermann discussed Pool’s prospects, Spiekermann knowing that his friend’s employer had just gone out of business. He suggested that if Pool wanted to make some money in type design, that he take a closer... Read More

FF DIN Round comes as a welcome addition to the most popular family in the FontFont library and brings warmth to FF DIN’s simplicity and industrial sterility. The face is more than a programmatically rounded version of its predecessor. Albert-Jan Pool and his team reworked each letterform to maintain the structure of the original. This ensures FF DIN and FF DIN... Read More

FF Enzo is a vigorous Scandinavian sans. Drawn by Swedish designer Tobias Kvant, the family comes in five weights from Thin to Black, each complete with companion italic. Inspired by past and present type styles, the face achieves a unique look; this mix of various sans serif design currents creates a quite contemporary, lively texture. The design features a high x-height with particularly... Read More

FF Fago is the quintessential corporate typeface, a result of many years of work within the challenges and requirements of complex corporate design projects. The family offers five finely balanced weights across three widths, enough for virtually any conceivable application. Its various widths were carefully planned and drawn to complement and combine with each other. Aside from the impressive... Read More

FF Ginger was designed as an alternative to the widely-used Crillee and Serpentine faces, which are especially popular for their bold italic variants. They express speed and strength and are popular choices for service industry logos, television productions, etc. FF Ginger’s Light weight and matching Icons extend the typographic scope of the narrow use cases seen in the other two. The... Read More

FF Good is a straight-sided sans serif in the American Gothic tradition, designed by Warsaw-based Łukasz Dziedzic. Despite having something of an “old-fashioned” heritage, FF Good feels new. Many customers agree: the sturdy, legible forms of FF Good have been put to good use in the Polish-language magazine ‘Komputer Swiat,’ the German and Russian edition of the celebrity tabloid OK!, and the... Read More

FF Good is a straight-sided sans serif in the American Gothic tradition, designed by Warsaw-based Łukasz Dziedzic. Despite having something of an “old-fashioned” heritage, FF Good feels new. Many customers agree: the sturdy, legible forms of FF Good have been put to good use in the Polish-language magazine ‘Komputer Swiat,’ the German and Russian edition of the celebrity tabloid OK!, and the... Read More

The spark behind the creation FF Hydra family came from observing 19th and early 20th century French poster lettering. Its designer Silvio Napoleone found that the styles of this period combined whimsical, economic, and impactful qualities. A typeface that incorporated these characteristics could be especially relevant to today’s design aesthetic. Naploeone began by sketching an extremely... Read More

FF Kievit explores the synthesis of the sans serif form to the structure and proportions of a traditional Renaissance Roman such as Garamond or Granjon. Work began on the typeface in 1995 when Mike Abbink was a student at Art Center in California. The family spans nine weights and includes small caps, true italics, and multiple figure sets – everything necessary for creating sophisticated... Read More

FF Masala is a small sans and script family from French type designer Xavier Dupré. The initial idea for the typeface was to create a casual-style sans to complement his earlier FF Tartine Script. After some refining and reconsideration, FF Masala became a a stand-alone product, with three sans styles including italics, and a set of script faces, drawn in three weights. FF Masala Script... Read More

The family that became FF Meta was first called PT55, an economical typeface made for easy reading at small sizes created for the West German Post Office in 1985. Erik Spiekermann later improved and expanded his design to include more weights and styles, and prepared its release as FF Meta, one of the first and truly foundational members of the early FontFont library. As desktop publishing... Read More

Mike Abbink’s initial concept with FF Milo was to create a compact sans with very short ascenders and decenders. This resulted in a versatile typeface that’s well suited to magazine and newspaper typography. The typeface was named after a resilient grain, hinting at its ability to serve as a design staple. In later releases the design was expanded upon with FF... Read More

FF Nuvo is a contemporary sans with a slight contrast. Certain characters have a calligraphic touch, especially a, g and y. The typeface offers several alternate characters that may be substituted – for example: a, g, k, s, y – for additional typographic range in text. Designer Siegfried Rückel developed the concept for FF Nuvo during a stay in Paris, after being inspired by the extravagant... Read More

FF Nuvo is a contemporary sans with a slight contrast. Certain characters have a calligraphic touch, especially a, g and y. The typeface offers several alternate characters that may be substituted – for example: a, g, k, s, y – for additional typographic range in text. Designer Siegfried Rückel developed the concept for FF Nuvo during a stay in Paris, after being inspired by the extravagant... Read More

While a senior in college, Christian Schwartz worked for a clothing company, designing t-shirts and labels. The aesthetic of one of the lines mixed industrial and military looks, which called for a lot of stencil type. He picked up some stencils at a hardware store and digitized the characters, since other companies regularly ripped off prints they designed with readily available fonts. In this... Read More

This lively sans combines plain shapes with calligraphic touches. FF Sanuk’s roman letterforms are clean and crisply drawn, but their stylish detailing showcases Dupré’s artistic spirit. Modestly sloped, indeed, nearly upright italics convey a contemporary air while maintaining a high degree of legibility. The seven-weight family progresses in tone from a delicate hairline to a chunky fat face,... Read More

FF Sero combines the familiar forms of an American Grotesque with the legibility of a Humanist sans. It has open counters, a relatively high x-height and a homogeneous gray value. Inside the seven years of its development, the classic letterforms matured to reveal a balanced, distincitve design. Eight carefully stepped weights and an extensive character set allow for a sophisticated and... Read More

FF Signa is a characteristically Danish design, rooted in architectural lettering rather than book typography. Originally created for signage—hence the name—FF Signa is now a typographic family with three widths. All weights include italics, small caps, and several styles of figures. Because of the quality of this “vernacular-lettering-turned-typeface” conversion, FF Signa received a Danish... Read More

FF Speak is Danish designer Jan Maack’s rounded sans. Maack’s express aim was to capture the tone and feeling of youthful conversation. FF Speak’s smooth, energetic letterforms can be used in different ways to vary the intended mood, depending on the weights and amount of extra ligatures employed. Its light weight carries regular speech, and a heavy weight speaks more loudly. Regular and bold... Read More

FF Super Grotesk draws from a 1930s design by Arno Drescher, easily the most popular sans serif in use in East Germany – the GDR’s equivalent of the then unavailable Futura. Today, the face is found only in period specimen books and early East German ephemera. Both served as sources for FF Super Grotesk’s earliest sketches. Its original glyph coverage was increased with special symbols and... Read More

FF Typestar, from Steffen Sauerteig, part of the eBoy design collective, is one of the most sophisticated typewriter-inspired fonts in the FontFont library. Although FF Typestar is essentially a geometric typeface, it is still subtly refined. The small system includes two families. The first is a typical font quartet: regular, italic, black, and black italic. These offer everything needed for... Read More

A grown-up, no-nonsense sibling to Erik Spiekermann’s popular FF Meta, FF Unit irons out many of the quirks of its predecessor, dialing back the warmth to a comfortable, if a bit cool, room temperature. Set at small sizes, FF Unit’s legibility is aided by its increased contrast and simplified forms, all of which (a, g, i, j, l, U, M) have alternates. First released in 2003, FF Unit later... Read More

Rounded typefaces go in and out of style. They are often used for user interfaces, or for back-lit signage. Sharp type often looks blunt in these situations, and the amount of bluntness is unpredictable. The solution: start by rounding the corners. FF Unit Rounded began as an exclusive customization of FF Unit. Something friendly and precise to be read on screen, on signs, in print, and a broad... Read More

Xavier Dupré’s FF Yoga mixes the harshness of a blackletter with the balanced rhythm and round shapes of the Renaissance Roman. Its sturdy serifs are a good choice for body text; They also serve as an effective headline face given their subtly chiseled counters. FF Yoga Sans is a contemporary alternative to the quintessential humanist sans (Gill Sans) and a steady companion to FF Yoga... Read More