Public Sans
A free alternative to Franklin Gothic
Built for United States government websites, which explains what it optimises for: neutrality, plainness, and legibility ahead of charm. It descends from Libre Franklin and through it from Franklin Gothic, so the skeleton is a century old even where the drawing is not. A sound pick when the content has to matter more than the typography.
Alphabets
- Latin
- Latin Extendedaccented characters for most European languages
- Turkishincluding ı, İ, ğ, ş and the rest
- Vietnamesethe full set of stacked accents
Weight — 400
Specification
- Designer
- Foundry
- Released
- Category
- Alternative to
- License
- Commercial use
- Good for
- Weights
- Styles
- Variable
- Glyphs
- Languages
- Download size
- Source
Size ladder
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Characters
Uppercase
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z
Lowercase
- a
- b
- c
- d
- e
- f
- g
- h
- i
- j
- k
- l
- m
- n
- o
- p
- q
- r
- s
- t
- u
- v
- w
- x
- y
- z
Numerals
- 0
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
Punctuation & symbols
- .
- ,
- :
- ;
- !
- ?
- '
- "
- ‘
- ’
- “
- ”
- (
- )
- [
- ]
- {
- }
- /
- \
- |
- -
- –
- —
- _
- @
- #
- $
- %
- &
- *
- +
- =
- <
- >
- ~
- ^
- `
- €
- £
- ¥
- ©
- ®
- °
- §
- †
- •
- …
Use it on the web
@font-face {
font-family: 'Public Sans';
/* The download contains .ttf files. Put yours wherever you serve static
files from and point this at it. Converting to .woff2 first cuts the
size by roughly 60% and every current browser supports it. */
src: url('/fonts/public-sans.woff2') format('woff2');
font-weight: 100 900;
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
}
body {
font-family: 'Public Sans', sans-serif;
}License
OFL-1.1
You may use, modify and redistribute this font, including in commercial work. You may not sell the font file on its own, and any modified version must be released under the same license and under a different name.
Commercial use allowed
Questions
- Is Public Sans free for commercial use?
- Yes. Public Sans is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which allows commercial use with no fee and no attribution requirement. You can use it in client work, in products you sell, on the web and in print. The one thing you may not do is sell the font file on its own. The licence is inside the download.
- Can I use Public Sans in a logo?
- Yes. The licence covers the font software, not the artwork you make with it, so a logo set in Public Sans belongs to you — including if you later register it as a trademark. You do not need permission and you do not owe anything to Dan Williams, Pablo Impallari. What the licence stops you doing is redistributing the font file itself as a product.
- How do I install Public Sans?
- Download the zip and unzip it. On a Mac, select the 2 font files inside and open them, then press Install Font. On Windows, select them, right-click and choose Install. Restart any application that was already open before it will show up. Public Sans is a variable font: those files carry all 9 weights at once. Some older software — Word, Canva, and Photoshop before 2018 — only reads the first weight and will show it as Regular. If that happens, use the Static download on this page instead: it has 18 ordinary files, one per weight, and works everywhere.
- Does Public Sans support Turkish?
- Yes. Public Sans includes the characters Turkish needs that plain Latin does not — the dotless ı, the dotted İ, and ğ, ş, ü, ö and ç in both cases. This was checked against the font file itself, not assumed from the fact that it covers Latin.
- Does Public Sans support Latin, Latin Extended, Turkish and Vietnamese?
- Yes. Public Sans covers Latin, Latin Extended, Turkish and Vietnamese, across 648 glyphs. Anything outside those alphabets is not included — the character map further up this page shows exactly what you get.