Spectral
Commissioned by Google for reading in a browser, and the brief shows in the details rather than in the shapes: the stems are slightly heavier than a print serif would need, the counters are opened up, and the serifs are cut to survive being rendered on a grid of pixels. Seven weights with true italics, which is unusually complete for a screen serif. It is a quiet face and it is meant to be.
Alphabets
- Latin
- Latin Extendedaccented characters for most European languages
- Turkishincluding ı, İ, ğ, ş and the rest
- Cyrillic
- Cyrillic Extended
- Vietnamesethe full set of stacked accents
Style
Weight — 400
Specification
- Designer
- Production Type
- Foundry
- Production Type
- Released
- 2017
- Category
- Serif
- License
- OFL-1.1
- Commercial use
- Allowed
- Good for
- Body text, Long-form reading, Editorial, Documents
- Weights
- 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800
- Styles
- Normal, Italic
- Variable
- No
- Glyphs
- 1,480
- Languages
- Latin, Latin Extended, Turkish, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Vietnamese
- Download size
- 1.7 MB
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: 'Spectral';
/* 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/spectral.woff2') format('woff2');
font-weight: 200;
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
}
body {
font-family: 'Spectral', 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 Spectral free for commercial use?
- Yes. Spectral 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 Spectral in a logo?
- Yes. The licence covers the font software, not the artwork you make with it, so a logo set in Spectral belongs to you — including if you later register it as a trademark. You do not need permission and you do not owe anything to Production Type. What the licence stops you doing is redistributing the font file itself as a product.
- How do I install Spectral?
- Download the zip and unzip it. On a Mac, select the 14 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.
- Does Spectral support Turkish?
- Yes. Spectral 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 Spectral support Latin, Latin Extended, Turkish, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended and Vietnamese?
- Yes. Spectral covers Latin, Latin Extended, Turkish, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended and Vietnamese, across 1,480 glyphs. Anything outside those alphabets is not included — the character map further up this page shows exactly what you get.