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Open Sans
View on Wikipediafrom Wikipedia
 | |
| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Classification | Humanist |
| Designer | Steve Matteson |
| Foundry | Ascender Corporation |
| Date created | 2010[1] |
| Date released | 2011[2] |
| License | SIL Open Font License, Apache License 2.0 (before March 2021) |
| Design based on | Droid Sans |
| Website | fonts |
Open Sans is an open source humanist sans-serif typeface that was designed by Steve Matteson under commission from Google. It was released in 2011 and is based on his earlier design called Droid Sans, which was specifically created for Android mobile devices but with slight modifications to its width.
The typeface is characterized by its wide apertures on many letters and a large x-height, making it highly legible on screens and at small sizes. Being part of the humanist genre of sans-serif typefaces, it also features a true italic style. As of July 2018, Open Sans is the second most widely used font on Google Fonts, serving over four billion views per day across more than 20 million websites.[3]
In March 2021, the Open Sans font family was updated to include a variable font version, which now also supports Hebrew characters.[3]
Use
[edit]Open Sans is popular in flat design-style web design.[4]
Open Sans is used in some of Google's web pages as well as its print and web advertisements. It is the official font of the UK's Labour, Co-operative, and Liberal Democrat parties.
Used in WordPress 3.8 which was released on December 12, 2013.[5]
Development
[edit]According to Google, it was developed with an "upright stress, open forms and a neutral, yet friendly appearance" and is "optimized for legibility across print, web, and mobile interfaces."[3] Its design is similar to that of Matteson's Droid Sans, created as the first user interface font for Android phones, but with wider characters and the inclusion of italic variants.[6] Explaining the different name, Matteson has said "Droid was intentionally narrow for mobile screens but it didn't have 'narrow' in the name. Open Sans isn't really 'extended' so that wasn't really an option either. A new family name is the direction they chose."[7]
Unicode support
[edit]The character repertoire contains 897 glyphs, covering the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets with a wide range of diacritics.
In January 2014, Israeli type designer Yanek Iontef released an extension font covering the Hebrew alphabet with support for niqqud (but not cantillation marks) for early access.[8] The extension font went on to become popular and to be used by prominent institutions such as Tel Aviv University in its 2016 rebranding, and by the Haaretz website.[9] Hebrew support was added in March 2021.
Derivatives
[edit]Open Sans has six weights (Light 300, Normal 400, Medium 500, Semi-Bold 600, Bold 700 and Extra Bold 800), each of them with an italic version, totaling 12 versions, although the Medium and Medium Italic styles are not yet accepted into Adobe Fonts. It has a number of stylistic alternates, such as a capital 'i' with a serif (for situations where this could be confused with a number '1' or lower-case 'L') and a selectable choice between a single and double-storey 'g'. Numbers can be set as tabular or proportional lining figures or as proportional text figures.[10]
Open Sans Condensed
[edit]Open Sans Condensed has three styles: light, bold and light italic.[11] As of 2021, the "Regular", "Semibold", and "Extra Bold" versions have been released to GitHub, but not yet accepted into Google Fonts or Adobe Fonts.
Open Serif
[edit]Matteson designed Open Serif, a companion slab serif typeface family. While Open Serif is not open-source, the font is sold by Matteson Typographics, owned by Steve Matteson and released on August 26, 2016.[12]
Open Sans Soft
[edit]On March 23, 2021, Matteson released a rounded version of Open Sans called Open Sans Soft. Like Open Serif, it is not an open-source font and is sold by Matteson Typographics. In contrast to the original open-source Open Sans, the capital 'i' with a serif is the default glyph for that letter, with the glyph without a serif as a stylistic alternate for it.[13]
See also
[edit]- Open-source Unicode typefaces
- Cantarell, the default typeface in past versions of GNOME
- Droid (typeface), the default fonts for first versions of Android
- Noto fonts, the default fonts for newer versions of Android
- Roboto, the default fonts for newer versions of Android
- IBM Plex, free and open-source fonts from IBM
- National Fonts, free and open-source Thai fonts
- PT Fonts, free and open-source fonts from Russia
- STIX Fonts project, typefaces intended to serve the scientific and engineering community
References
[edit]- ^ fonts2u: Open Sans, December 20, 2010
- ^ "Typedia: Open Sans". Archived from the original on August 26, 2014. Retrieved November 26, 2011.
- ^ a b c "Open Sans". Google Fonts. Archived from the original on December 16, 2023. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
- ^ Reid, Geri (April 29, 2013). "The flat design trend - where to from here?". Archived from the original on February 2, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
- ^ Mullenweg, Matt (December 12, 2013). "WordPress 3.8 "Parker"". WordPress News. Retrieved June 22, 2020.
- ^ Middendorp, Jan. "Creative Characters: Steve Matteson". MyFonts. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
- ^ Moss, Ben (August 26, 2013). "Interview: Steve Matteson". Webdesigner Depot. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
- ^ "אופן סאנס – גופן רשת חינמי בעיצובו של יאנק יונטף" [Open Sans - A Free Web-font designed by Yanek Iontef]. הלשכה לטיפוגרפיה עברית (in Hebrew). January 19, 2014. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
- ^ Ben Yehuda, Oded. "״מגניב״ או מבולבל? המיתוג החדש של אוניברסיטת תל אביב" ['Cool' or Confused? The New Branding of Tel Aviv University]. xnet (in Hebrew). Retrieved July 7, 2018.
- ^ Open Sans, version 1.10
- ^ "Open Sans Condensed". Google Fonts. Archived from the original on June 28, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
- ^ "Open Serif". MyFonts. Retrieved October 22, 2018.
- ^ "Open Sans Soft". MyFonts. Retrieved October 11, 2021.
External links
[edit]| Software and libraries | |
|---|---|
| Licenses | |
| Operating system, corporate and professional |
|
| Government typefaces | |
| Other typefaces | |
| Groups and people | |
Open Sans
View on Grokipediafrom Grokipedia
Open Sans is an open-source humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Steve Matteson, who served as Type Director at Ascender Corporation, and commissioned by Google for broad digital use. Originally released in 2011 under the Apache License, Version 2.0, it was updated in March 2021 to a variable font format with added Hebrew support and relicensed under the Open Font License. It features a comprehensive family with multiple weights and styles, emphasizing legibility through open letterforms, upright stress, and a neutral yet approachable aesthetic optimized for print, web, and mobile interfaces.[1][2][3]
The typeface includes a full 897-glyph character set supporting Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and other scripts, enabling versatile multilingual applications. As described by Google, Open Sans was crafted "with an upright stress, open forms and a neutral, yet friendly appearance," drawing subtle inspiration from earlier designs like Droid Sans to improve readability at small sizes and across screens.[1][2]
Since its debut, Open Sans has achieved widespread adoption, ranking as the second most popular font in the Google Fonts library and serving billions of views daily across tens of millions of websites as of 2025, thanks to its clean design and free availability. Its influence extends to major brands and platforms, underscoring its role in modern digital typography.[4][2]
History
Commission and Development
Open Sans was commissioned by Google in 2010 to serve as a versatile corporate typeface optimized for digital interfaces. Steve Matteson, then serving as Type Director at Ascender Corporation, led the design effort, drawing on his expertise in creating readable fonts for screen use.[5][1] The typeface adopts a humanist sans-serif style, blending modern clarity with subtle classical influences from typefaces such as News Gothic and Franklin Gothic, while building upon the foundations of Droid Sans for enhanced openness.[5][6] Matteson's approach emphasized neutral proportions to ensure legibility across various sizes and devices, prioritizing a contemporary upright stress that balances formality and approachability.[5] Development involved meticulous glyph drawing, with an initial focus on the Latin script to establish core readability features like open forms that prevent visual crowding on screens. This process laid the groundwork for future expansions, reflecting Google's aim for a typeface that could scale globally.[5] Subsequent updates, such as the 2021 variable font version, built on this foundation to introduce greater flexibility.Release and Licensing
Open Sans was publicly released in 2011 through Google Web Fonts, which later rebranded to Google Fonts, making it freely available for web designers and developers to embed in their projects. The font family was initially offered in multiple weights and styles, supporting a wide range of Latin-based languages and optimized for digital readability across devices.[7] The typeface was licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, which permitted free use, modification, and distribution for both personal and commercial purposes without royalties, fostering its rapid adoption in open-source communities and web applications.[8] This permissive licensing aligned with Google's goal of promoting accessible typography on the web, allowing users to download and host the fonts locally if needed.[3] In March 2021, Google released a major update to the Open Sans family, introducing variable font support that enabled smooth interpolation between weights for more efficient loading and flexible design applications. This revision also incorporated Hebrew script support, expanding its multilingual capabilities, and transitioned the licensing to the SIL Open Font License (OFL), simplifying terms while maintaining open-source freedoms. Today, Open Sans remains accessible via platforms such as Google Fonts for web integration and Adobe Fonts for desktop and creative software use, ensuring broad compatibility across professional and personal workflows.[9]Design Characteristics
Typographic Features
Open Sans is classified as a humanist sans-serif typeface, characterized by its proportions that provide a balanced width suitable for both print and digital applications.[10] This design draws from humanist traditions, featuring open apertures—particularly in letters like 'c', 'e', and 's'—which enhance readability by allowing greater visual breathing room, a feature central to the font's name and legibility on screens.[11] Subtle stroke modulation adds a gentle variation in line thickness, contributing to a neutral yet approachable aesthetic without aggressive contrasts that could hinder legibility.[12] The typeface offers six primary weights: Light (300), Regular (400), Medium (500), SemiBold (600), Bold (700), and ExtraBold (800), each accompanied by matching italic styles to support varied typographic hierarchies.[1] These weights maintain consistent proportions across the family, ensuring even spacing and rhythm in text setting, making it versatile for body copy and headings alike. As a sans-serif, Open Sans eschews extreme serifs or decorative flourishes, prioritizing a clean, unobtrusive form that facilitates smooth reading flows.[1] Optical adjustments optimize the font for diverse sizes and media, particularly screens, with a larger x-height that elevates lowercase letters for improved small-scale recognition and a taller overall appearance.[11] Wider counters in characters like 'o' and 'a' further promote clarity by reducing visual clutter at reduced resolutions, while the overall neutral design avoids distortions that might occur in more geometric sans-serifs.[10] In 2021, Open Sans was expanded to include variable font support, allowing seamless interpolation between weights for more fluid digital implementations.[13]Language and Unicode Support
Open Sans was initially released in 2011 with 897 glyphs, providing comprehensive support for Western European languages through coverage of the Basic Latin (U+0000–U+007F), Latin-1 Supplement (U+0080–U+00FF), Latin Extended-A (U+0100–U+017F), and Latin Extended-B (U+0180–U+024F) Unicode blocks, along with essential punctuation marks.[1] This foundation ensured robust rendering for languages such as English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese, while also including initial support for Greek and Cyrillic scripts to extend usability across additional European linguistic contexts.[1] Subsequent updates expanded the font's Unicode repertoire within the Basic Multilingual Plane (U+0000–U+FFFF), maintaining full coverage for Western European needs while incorporating Vietnamese through extended Latin diacritics. The core family supports Greek (U+0370–U+03FF), Cyrillic (U+0400–U+04FF), and extended variants of these blocks, enabling text display in languages like Russian, Bulgarian, and Modern Greek without fallback requirements in most web environments.[14] In March 2021, Open Sans was updated to include a variable font format, which added Hebrew script support (U+0590–U+05FF), allowing dynamic adjustments in weight, width, and italic styles across supported scripts for more flexible multilingual applications.[1] This enhancement improved handling of right-to-left text in Hebrew, complementing the font's left-to-right Latin base and facilitating broader use in bilingual interfaces. Despite these advancements, Open Sans does not cover complex scripts such as Arabic (U+0600–U+06FF) or Indic systems like Devanagari (U+0900–U+097F), where glyph shaping and contextual forms are essential. For such languages, Google recommends complementary fonts from the Noto Sans family, designed specifically for near-complete Unicode coverage to address these gaps in global typography needs.Variants
Condensed Variant
Open Sans Condensed is a space-optimized variant of the Open Sans typeface family, designed by Steve Matteson as a narrower iteration to address horizontal space constraints while preserving the original's proportions and legibility.[6] Introduced in 2012 shortly after the core family, it maintains the humanist sans-serif characteristics, including upright stress, open forms, and a neutral yet approachable appearance, making it suitable for compact layouts.[15] This variant is available in Light (300) and Bold (700) weights, with matching italic styles; additional weights are available in commercial versions.[15] Its design emphasizes practicality for headlines, navigation elements, and user interfaces in digital environments where width efficiency is essential, without altering the fundamental stroke modulation or x-height of the base font.[9] To achieve greater density, Open Sans Condensed incorporates refined letterspacing adjustments that enhance readability at smaller sizes and in confined spaces, while upholding the typeface's optimization for print, web, and mobile applications.[15] The glyph repertoire aligns closely with the core family, with a comprehensive set supporting Latin Extended, Greek, Cyrillic, and other scripts. However, as of 2023, it is no longer available directly from Google Fonts, though downloadable from other open-source repositories.[16][17]Serif and Soft Derivatives
Open Serif, released in 2016 by designer Steve Matteson, serves as a serif companion to the original Open Sans family, blending transitional and slab-serif elements for enhanced readability in print and display contexts.[18] This derivative maintains the open apertures and metrics of Open Sans while introducing elegant serifs and terminals that add subtle weight and texture, making it suitable for body text, headlines, and international layouts supporting a comprehensive character set for Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and other scripts, similar to Open Sans.[18] Unlike the sans-serif base, Open Serif incorporates features like small capitals, swash italics inspired by Renaissance forms, and old-style figures to provide a more formal yet approachable aesthetic for editorial and branding applications.[19] Open Sans Soft, introduced in March 2021 by the same designer, extends the family with rounded corners and softer curves to convey warmth and approachability in informal designs.[20] This stylized variant softens the geometric precision of Open Sans, creating organic shapes that enhance friendliness in user interfaces, logos, and marketing materials without altering the core proportions or legibility.[21] Available in multiple weights from Light to ExtraBold and italics, it inherits the broad language support of the original while emphasizing a playful, modern tone for digital and print branding.[20] Open Sans Hebrew, developed by Yanek Iontef around 2012 as a script addition to the Latin base, integrate bidirectional Hebrew glyphs while preserving the humanist proportions of Open Sans for multilingual typesetting; it was later integrated into the main family in 2021.[22] Community-driven modifications, such as the 2022 IPA extension on GitHub, further adapt the font by incorporating International Phonetic Alphabet characters for linguistic and educational uses.[23] These derivatives are enabled by the original typeface's Apache License 2.0, which permits modifications and redistribution under compatible terms, fostering open-source evolution while commercial variants like Open Serif and Open Sans Soft are licensed separately through Monotype.[8]Adoption and Usage
Integration in Google Products
Open Sans was optimized for legibility across digital platforms, facilitating its integration into Google's web-based services.[1] It has been used in various Google web properties for consistent text presentation, including during rebranding efforts to ensure reliable, cross-device rendering.[1] In March 2021, Open Sans was updated to a variable font format on Google Fonts, allowing dynamic adjustments to weight and width in a single file and improving loading performance in applications like Google Workspace.[1] This variable font version, along with the addition of Hebrew support, was released under the SIL Open Font License (OFL), unifying and simplifying the previous Apache License 2.0 terms.[1] Variable fonts generally reduce file sizes compared to multiple static files, benefiting resource-intensive environments such as collaborative editing in Docs and Sheets.[24] As of July 2018, Open Sans was serving over four billion views per day via Google Fonts, underscoring its role in powering typography across Google products.Widespread Applications
Open Sans has gained significant traction in web design owing to its seamless integration through Google Fonts, which allows developers to specify it easily in CSS font-family stacks, such asfont-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;, ensuring broad compatibility and quick loading without requiring custom font hosting.[25] This accessibility has made it a go-to choice for body text and headings on countless sites, contributing to its status as one of the most downloaded fonts from the library and the second most popular in Google Fonts as of 2024.[26][27]
Beyond web development, Open Sans features prominently in third-party branding, particularly in WordPress themes where it serves as a default or recommended typeface for its neutral readability across digital interfaces.[28] It also appears in print media, including digital magazines and publications, where its open forms and humanist design enhance legibility for extended reading, as recommended for versatile editorial layouts.[29]
Regarded as a "safe" and neutral option, Open Sans is often praised for its friendly, approachable aesthetic that avoids visual distraction, making it ideal for professional communications and user interfaces.[25] However, this ubiquity has drawn critiques for fostering visual monotony, with designers noting its overuse as the "new Arial" since around 2020, leading to homogenized digital landscapes lacking personality.[25]
The font's open-source SIL Open Font License has facilitated its global adoption, enabling free distribution and modification worldwide, resulting in estimates of over 20 million websites incorporating it as of 2018. This widespread availability, combined with support for variants like Condensed for space-constrained applications, underscores its enduring versatility in diverse creative contexts.[30]