Stardos Stencil

Vernon Adams · 2011 · OFL-1.1

Stardos Stencil is a serif first and a stencil second. Underneath the breaks it is a modulated bookish face with fine bracketed serifs and real thick-thin contrast, not the heavy military slab the word usually brings to mind. The gaps are narrow and fall in the expected places, which has a consequence worth knowing before you use it: below about thirty pixels it stops reading as a stencil and starts looking like a serif with a printing fault. Two weights, and no Turkish characters.

See Stardos Stencil in a paragraphCompare with Black Ops One and Saira Stencil One

Stardos Stencil at a glance

Commercial use
Yes · OFL 1.1
On a website
Yes · WOFF2 here
Variable
No · 2 weights
In a logo
Yes
Türkçe (ı İ ğ ş)
No
Italic
No

Alphabets

Style

Click the text above to set it in your own words.

Weight — 400

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

Specification

Designer
Vernon Adams
Released
2011
Category
Display
License
OFL-1.1
Commercial use
Allowed
Good for
Titles, Posters, Signage
Weights
400, 700
Styles
Normal
Variable
No
Glyphs
305
Languages
Latin, Latin Extended
Download size
46 KB
Source
github.com/google/fonts/tree/main/ofl/stardosstencil

Stardos Stencil character map

301 characters in the complete font. Grouped by the alphabets it covers — every cell is a character the file really contains.

Latin110

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

  • .
  • ,
  • :
  • ;
  • !
  • ?
  • '
  • "
  • ‘
  • ’
  • “
  • ”
  • (
  • )
  • [
  • ]
  • {
  • }
  • /
  • \
  • |
  • -
  • –
  • —
  • _
  • @
  • #
  • $
  • %
  • &
  • *
  • +
  • =
  • <
  • >
  • ~
  • ^
  • `
  • €
  • £
  • ¥
  • ©
  • ®
  • °
  • §
  • †
  • •
  • …

Latin Extended94

Western European

  • À
  • Á
  • Â
  • Ã
  • Ä
  • Å
  • Æ
  • Ç
  • È
  • É
  • Ê
  • Ë
  • Ì
  • Í
  • Î
  • Ï
  • Ð
  • Ñ
  • Ò
  • Ó
  • Ô
  • Õ
  • Ö
  • Ø
  • Ù
  • Ú
  • Û
  • Ü
  • Ý
  • Þ
  • ß
  • à
  • á
  • â
  • ã
  • ä
  • å
  • æ
  • ç
  • è
  • é
  • ê
  • ë
  • ì
  • í
  • î
  • ï
  • ð
  • ñ
  • ò
  • ó
  • ô
  • õ
  • ö
  • ø
  • ù
  • ú
  • û
  • ü
  • ý
  • þ
  • ÿ

Central and Eastern European

  • ħ
  • Ĩ
  • ĩ
  • ı
  • IJ
  • ij
  • Ĵ
  • ĵ
  • ķ
  • Ŀ
  • ŀ
  • Ł
  • ł
  • Ń
  • ń
  • Œ
  • œ
  • Ŕ
  • Ŗ
  • ŗ
  • Ř
  • ř
  • Š
  • š
  • Ÿ
  • Ž
  • ž

Romanian and other

  • Ș
  • ș
  • Ț
  • ț
  • ƒ

Use Stardos Stencil on the web

Self-hosted

You serve the file yourself. Nothing depends on this site staying up, and you get the whole character set — all Latin, Latin Extended. The file is stardos-stencil.woff2, the same one the WOFF2 button above gives you.

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Stardos Stencil';
  /* Take the WOFF2 button above, put stardos-stencil.woff2 wherever
     you serve static files from, and point this at it. */
  src: url('/fonts/stardos-stencil.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: 'Stardos Stencil', sans-serif;
}

Hosted by us

One line, nothing to upload. Put this in your <head>:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://thatsmyfont.com">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://thatsmyfont.com/fontfiles/stardos-stencil.css">

Then use it in your CSS:

body {
  font-family: 'Stardos Stencil', sans-serif;
}

One thing to know: the file we host is cut down to Latin characters so pages load quickly.

Questions

Is Stardos Stencil free for commercial use?
Yes. Stardos Stencil 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 Stardos Stencil in a logo?
Yes. The licence covers the font software, not the artwork you make with it, so a logo set in Stardos Stencil belongs to you — including if you later register it as a trademark. You do not need permission and you do not owe anything to Vernon Adams. What the licence stops you doing is redistributing the font file itself as a product.
How do I install Stardos Stencil?
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.
Does Stardos Stencil support Turkish?
No. Stardos Stencil covers Latin, but not the extra characters Türkçe needs — the dotless ı, the dotted İ, and ğ and ş. Text set in it would come out with missing or wrong letters.
What languages does Stardos Stencil support?
Stardos Stencil covers Latin and Latin Extended, across 305 glyphs. Anything outside those alphabets is not included — the character map further up this page shows exactly what you get.
What weights does Stardos Stencil come in?
Stardos Stencil comes in 2 weights: Regular (400) and Bold (700). Each weight is its own file in the download.
Where can I download Stardos Stencil as WOFF2?
From the WOFF2 button on this page — the file is stardos-stencil.woff2, and it is about 17 KB. It is the complete font repacked for the web rather than a cut-down copy: the same glyphs, the same spacing and the same hinting as the .ttf in the download, roughly 60% smaller. Every browser still receiving updates reads WOFF2, so it is the only web format most sites need. Google Fonts does not offer this file for download at all — it serves WOFF2 from its own servers and gives you .ttf if you ask for the family.
Why does Stardos Stencil stop looking like a stencil at small sizes?
Because its breaks are narrow. The gaps are a small fraction of the stroke width, so once the type is small enough that a stroke is only two or three pixels across, the gaps fall below one pixel and the renderer closes them. Set it above about thirty pixels if the stencil is the reason you chose it. The other two stencil faces here, Saira Stencil One and Big Shoulders Stencil Display, cut much wider gaps and survive further down.

Stardos Stencil 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

Designed by Vernon Adams

Copyright (c) 2011, Vernon Adams (vern@newtypography.co.uk) with Reserved Font Names \'Stardos\'. All rights reserved.

  • Taken unmodified from google/fonts
  • The licence file is inside every zip — the site will not publish a download without one
  • This page’s data last changed on 4 September 2026

Read the full license text · What these licenses mean · How we check

Pairs well with Stardos Stencil

Cite this page

Stardos Stencil font: licence, alphabets and downloads. Thats My Font. https://thatsmyfont.com/fonts/stardos-stencil (updated 2026-09-04)

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