Developer | |
---|---|
Type | Font embedding service |
Launch date | 2010 |
Website | fonts |
Google Fonts (formerly known as Google Web Fonts) is a computer font and web font service owned by Google. This includes free and open source font families, an interactive web directory for browsing the library, and APIs for using the fonts via CSS [2] and Android. [3] Google Fonts is also used with Google Workspace software such as Docs, Sheets, Drawings and Slides.
Popular fonts in the Google Fonts library include Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, Oswald, Montserrat, and Source Sans Pro. [4]
Google Fonts was launched in 2010 [5] and revamped in 2011, [6] 2016, [7] , 2020 [8] and 2023 [9]
On March 3, 2020, Google updated the catalog website with support for variable fonts.[ citation needed ] On March 2, 2021, the Google Fonts team announced they were adding support for open source icons. [10]
As of December 2024 [update] , Google Fonts had 1791 font families, including 455 variable font families. [11]
The library is maintained through Google Fonts' GitHub repository, where all font files can be obtained directly. Source files for many of the fonts are available from git repositories within the Google Fonts' GitHub organization, along with libre software tools used by the Google Fonts community.
Most of the fonts are released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, while some are released under the Apache License; [12] both are libre licenses.
The font library is also distributed by Monotype's SkyFonts and Adobe's Edge Web Fonts and Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) services.
In February 2022, a German court ruled that a website using Google Fonts violated the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by passing personally identifiable information (IP address) to Google without the user's consent or a legitimate interest in doing so. [13]
Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language files, for the display or printing of document pages, and the conversion between PostScript and PDF files.
FontForge is a FOSS font editor which supports many common font formats. Developed primarily by George Williams until 2012, FontForge is free software and is distributed under a mix of the GNU General Public License Version 3 and the 3-clause BSD license. It is available for operating systems including Linux, Windows, and macOS, and is localized into 12 languages.
Roboto is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google as the system font for its mobile operating system Android, and released in 2011 for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich".
GNU IceCat, formerly known as GNU IceWeasel, is a completely free version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser distributed by the GNU Project. It is compatible with Linux, Windows, Android and macOS.
HarfBuzz is a software library for supporting text shaping, which is the process of converting Unicode text to glyph indices and positions. The newer version, New HarfBuzz (2012–), targets various font technologies while the first version, Old HarfBuzz (2006–2012), targeted only OpenType fonts.
Droid is a font family first released in 2007 and created by Ascender Corporation for use by the Open Handset Alliance platform Android and licensed under the Apache License. The fonts are intended for use on the small screens of mobile handsets and were designed by Steve Matteson of Ascender Corporation.
A CSS framework is a library allowing for easier, more standards-compliant web design using the Cascading Style Sheets language. Most of these frameworks contain at least a grid. More functional frameworks also come with more features and additional JavaScript based functions, but are mostly design oriented and focused around interactive UI patterns. This detail differentiates CSS frameworks from other JavaScript frameworks.
The Public Type or PT Fonts are a family of free and open-source fonts released from 2009 onwards, comprising PT Sans, PT Serif and PT Mono. They were commissioned from the design agency ParaType by Rospechat, a department of the Russian Ministry of Communications, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Peter the Great's orthography reform and to create a font family that supported all the different variations of Cyrillic script used by the minority languages of Russia, as well as the Latin alphabet.
Modern HTML5 has feature-parity with the now-obsolete Adobe Flash. Both include features for playing audio and video within web pages. Flash was specifically built to integrate vector graphics and light games in a web page, features that HTML5 also supports.
Cantarell is the default typeface supplied with the user interface of GNOME since version 3.0, replacing Bitstream Vera and DejaVu. The font was originated by Dave Crossland in 2009.
Open Sans is an open source humanist sans-serif typeface that was designed by Steve Matteson under commission from Google. It was released in 2011 and is based on his earlier design called Droid Sans, which was specifically created for Android mobile devices but with slight modifications to its width.
Bootstrap is a free and open-source CSS framework directed at responsive, mobile-first front-end web development. It contains HTML, CSS and (optionally) JavaScript-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation, and other interface components.
Brackets is a source code editor with a primary focus on web development. Created by Adobe Inc., it is free and open-source software licensed under the MIT License, and is currently maintained on GitHub by open-source developers. It is written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Brackets is cross-platform, available for macOS, Windows, and most Linux distributions. The main purpose of Brackets is its live HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing functionality.
Noto is a free font family comprising over 100 individual computer fonts, which are together designed to cover all the scripts encoded in the Unicode standard. As of November 2024, Noto covers around 1,000 languages and 162 writing systems. As of October 2016, Noto fonts cover all 93 scripts defined in Unicode version 6.1, although fewer than 30,000 of the nearly 75,000 CJK unified ideographs in version 6.0 are covered. In total, Noto fonts cover over 77,000 characters, which is around half of the 149,186 characters defined in Unicode 15.0.
Source Han Sans is a sans-serif gothic typeface family created by Adobe and Google. It is also released by Google under the Noto fonts project as Noto Sans CJK. The family includes seven weights, and supports Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean. It also includes Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters from the Source Sans family.
Product Sans is a contemporary geometric sans-serif typeface created by Google for branding purposes. It replaced the old Google logo on September 1, 2015. As Google's branding was becoming more apparent on multiple device types, Google sought to adapt its design so that its logo could be portrayed in constrained spaces and remain consistent for its users across platforms.
A variable font (VF) is a font file that is able to store a continuous range of design variants. An entire typeface can be stored in such a file, with an infinite number of fonts available to be sampled.
IBM Plex is an open source typeface superfamily conceptually designed and developed by Mike Abbink at IBM in collaboration with Bold Monday to reflect the design principles of IBM and to be used for all brand material across the company internationally. Plex replaces Helvetica as the IBM corporate typeface after more than fifty years, freeing the company from extensive license payments in the process.
Carbon Design System is a free and open-source design system and library created by IBM, which implements the IBM Design Language, and licensed under Apache License 2.0. Its public development initially started on June 10, 2015. Their components have multiple implementations, which includes a vanilla JS and CSS implementation and React, while the community maintains the frameworks developed in Svelte, Vue.js, and Web Components. The official typeface to be used according to the guidelines is the IBM Plex typeface, with alternative typefaces for CJK scripts are Noto Sans CJK SC, Noto Sans CJK TC, and Noto Sans JP.