Design Resources | Will O'Pedia

tags: Design

Type

Coding Fonts
Open Foundry
Typewolf
ドットコロン: Somewhat sci-fi but tasteful
Dharma Type
Huerta Tipográfica
Paratype
TypeTogether

Font Interceptor

There is very little scientific evidence on readability of serif vs sans type.¹

Adapter PE

Adelle: Popular, versatile, magazine-ish (TypeTogether)

Aileron: Spacey neo-grotesque from ドットコロン. See also the successor, Nacelle. OFL

Alegreya: Pleasant humanist in sans, serif, and smallcaps. OFL, HT

Atkinson Hyperlegible: Optimized for low-vision legibility, from the Braille Institute. cf Lexend

BC Sans: Noto Sans plus glyphs for Indigenous languages used in BC, contributed by FirstVoices

Bebas: Popular all-caps (Dharma Type)

BellTopo

Charter: Optimized for low-res laser printers, still very legible on screen. A Butterick favourite among free fonts. cf Charis, a multilingual derivative by SIL with especially good IPA support

Bitter: Pixel-oriented slab (Sol Matas of HT)

Bodoni

Bree: Spirited upright italic for display (TypeTogether)

Calluna: Slopey serif

Circular: Friendly geometric used by Slack

Commit Mono: Anonymous mono with “smart kerning” (doesn't work well in Emacs). cf Monaspace

Crimson Pro: Contemporary OFL Garalde

Decimal: Inspired by wristwatch lettering

Fantasque: Programming fonts with some “wibbly-wobbly”

IM Fell: Literal transfer of an unusual collection of fonts willed to Oxford University

Fira Code: Fira Mono plus cool ligatures. No italics :(

Frutiger: Highly legible sans. Very popular, especially in Europe and for public signage. Spiekermann: “the best general typeface ever”. Many knockoffs, including Apple's Myriad and Microsoft's Segoe.

Gridlite PE

Hahmlet: Attention-seeking slab with 한글 support, based on mystery lettering from a poster for a 1940s Korean film production of Hamlet.

Highway Gothic: Highway sign typeface widely adopted in USA and elsewhere. See Barry Stock's literal transfer to OTF, and Overpass, an open-source derivative (though RedHatOfficial/Overpass#91 caught me, had to use an old version off Font Squirrel)

Iosevka: Compact and highly customizable monospace/quasi-proportional

Literata: Custom family by TypeTogether for Google Play Books. Upright italic is hard to get used to

Lora: Artistic and somewhat calligraphic serif. OFL, very popular

Los Angeles: Bitmap script by Susan Kare for early MacOS. source

Monaspace: Mono superfamily with “texture healing”. cf Commit Mono

Monoid

mononoki

Playpen: Irregular handwriting (TypeTogether)

Proforma: Thin, light, spiky. Cordale is similar but squarer and friendlier

Public Type: Pan-Cyrillic serif+sans+mono courtesy of the Russian Federation (Paratype)

Quadraat (pictured: DemiBold Italic)

Sabon: Garalde interestingly constrained to Linotype

Scala: Early digital humanist (1990), also in sans. Still popular, especially for books. See Joanna for heritage

Sentinel: Slightly old-timey slab

Spleen: Mono bitmaps developed for small OLED displays

Syntax: Humanist sans modelled on Renaissance serif, used in Niklaus Wirth's Oberon OS

Vollkorn: Workhorse serif with smallcaps (OFL)

anarcat's monospace test sheet

US keyboard coverage:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz`1234567890-=[]\;',./
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ~!@#$%^&*()_+{}|:"<>?

latin1 coverage: ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿
EURO SIGN, TRADE MARK SIGN: €™

ambiguity test:

e¢coC0ODQ iI71lL!|¦
b6G&0B83  [](){}/\.…·•
zs$S52Z%  ´`'"‘’“”«»

all characters in a sentence, uppercase:

the quick fox jumps over the lazy dog
THE QUICK FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG

same, in french:

voix ambiguë d'un cœur qui, au zéphyr, préfère les jattes de kiwis.
VOIX AMBIGUË D'UN CŒUR QUI, AU ZÉPHYR, PRÉFÈRE LES JATTES DE KIWIS.

Ligatures test:

-<< -< -<- <-- <--- <<- <- -> ->> --> ---> ->- >- >>-
=<< =< =<= <== <=== <<= <= => =>> ==> ===> =>= >= >>=
<-> <--> <---> <----> <=> <==> <===> <====> :: ::: __
<~~ </ </> /> ~~> == != /= ~= <> === !== !=== =/= =!=
<: := *= *+ <* <*> *> <| <|> |> <. <.> .> +* =* =: :>
(* *) /* */ [| |] {| |} ++ +++ \/ /\ |- -| <!-- <!---

Box drawing alignment tests:
                                                                   █
╔══╦══╗  ┌──┬──┐  ╭──┬──╮  ╭──┬──╮  ┏━━┳━━┓ ┎┒┏┑   ╷  ╻ ┏┯┓ ┌┰┐    ▉ ╱╲╱╲╳╳╳
║┌─╨─┐║  │╔═╧═╗│  │╒═╪═╕│  │╓─╁─╖│  ┃┌─╂─┐┃ ┗╃╄┙  ╶┼╴╺╋╸┠┼┨ ┝╋┥    ▊ ╲╱╲╱╳╳╳
║│╲ ╱│║  │║   ║│  ││ │ ││  │║ ┃ ║│  ┃│ ╿ │┃ ┍╅╆┓   ╵  ╹ ┗┷┛ └┸┘    ▋ ╱╲╱╲╳╳╳
╠╡ ╳ ╞╣  ├╢   ╟┤  ├┼─┼─┼┤  ├╫─╂─╫┤  ┣┿╾┼╼┿┫ ┕┛┖┚     ┌┄┄┐ ╎ ┏┅┅┓ ┋ ▌ ╲╱╲╱╳╳╳
║│╱ ╲│║  │║   ║│  ││ │ ││  │║ ┃ ║│  ┃│ ╽ │┃ ░░▒▒▓▓██ ┊  ┆ ╎ ╏  ┇ ┋ ▍
║└─╥─┘║  │╚═╤═╝│  │╘═╪═╛│  │╙─╀─╜│  ┃└─╂─┘┃ ░░▒▒▓▓██ ┊  ┆ ╎ ╏  ┇ ┋ ▎
╚══╩══╝  └──┴──┘  ╰──┴──╯  ╰──┴──╯  ┗━━┻━━┛          └╌╌┘ ╎ ┗╍╍┛ ┋ ▏▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█

Dashes alignment test:

HYPHEN-MINUS, MINUS SIGN, EN, EM DASH, HORIZONTAL BAR, LOW LINE
--------------------------------------------------
−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
__________________________________________________