Special Elite
Special Elite is a typewriter face with the strike left in — ink pooling at the joints, edges eaten away, and no two instances of a letter quite the same weight. Brian Bonislawsky based it on the Smith-Corona Special Elite and a Remington, and the roughness is drawn into the outlines rather than applied as a texture, so it survives being printed. It is not fixed-width, which surprises people who assume every typewriter face is.
Alphabets
- Latin
- Latin Extendedaccented characters for most European languages
- Turkishincluding ı, İ, ğ, ş and the rest
Specification
- Designer
- Astigmatic
- Foundry
- Astigmatic
- Released
- 2010
- Category
- Display
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Commercial use
- Allowed
- Good for
- Titles, Posters, Certificates, Short body text
- Weights
- 400
- Styles
- Normal
- Variable
- No
- Glyphs
- 370
- Languages
- Latin, Latin Extended, Turkish
- Download size
- 93 KB
Size ladder
96
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
64
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
40
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
24
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
16
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
12
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: 'Special Elite';
/* 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/special-elite.woff2') format('woff2');
font-weight: 400;
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
}
body {
font-family: 'Special Elite', sans-serif;
}License
Apache-2.0
You may use, modify and redistribute this font, including in commercial work, provided you keep the license and attribution notices with it.
Commercial use allowed
Questions
- Is Special Elite free for commercial use?
- Yes. Special Elite is released under the Apache License 2.0, 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 Special Elite in a logo?
- Yes. The licence covers the font software, not the artwork you make with it, so a logo set in Special Elite belongs to you — including if you later register it as a trademark. You do not need permission and you do not owe anything to Astigmatic. What the licence stops you doing is redistributing the font file itself as a product.
- How do I install Special Elite?
- Download the zip and unzip it. On a Mac, select the 1 font file 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.
- Does Special Elite support Turkish?
- Yes. Special Elite 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 Special Elite support Latin, Latin Extended and Turkish?
- Yes. Special Elite covers Latin, Latin Extended and Turkish, across 370 glyphs. Anything outside those alphabets is not included — the character map further up this page shows exactly what you get.