UI / UX
March 9, 2023
10 Frequently Preferred Google Fonts and Their Features in Design
Author:
Burak Özkıran
Font choices can reveal a lot about the design you are working on. Therefore, they must be functional and compatible with your design. Let’s explore the ten most commonly used fonts that graphic and UI/UX designers can adapt to many projects.
Open Sans is an open-source humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Steve Matteson, commissioned by Google, and released in 2011. Open Sans features an upright stress, open forms, and a neutral yet friendly appearance. Its most notable features are its readability and legibility in all sizes. In addition, it is suitable for various websites, mobile interfaces, and print. It also stands out by supporting a wide range of languages, including lesser-known ones, and supports languages using the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets.
The letter forms of the Open Sans font are displayed in the visual. To try using it in your projects, click the link to download it for free.
Created and released by Julieta Ulanovsky in 2011, this font is a geometric sans-serif typeface with a modern, minimalist design characterized by clean lines. It also features a large x-height. Notably, the “Q” has a charming tail, while the “J” has a beautiful cross curve at the top. Montserrat is an excellent choice for branding, publishing, websites, logos, and print projects. It also supports the “Latin” and the “Cyrillic” alphabet, commonly used in Slavic regions.
To explore Montserrat’s letter forms and character traits and test them in your texts, click the link to download it for free.
The fonts were initially commissioned by Paula Scher from Pentagram and released in 2019 by Jeremy Mickel of MCKL for the new “Red Hat” identity. Each character consists of perfect circles and flat, double lines. “Red Hat Display” can be used for headlines, body copy, or both, creating a visual hierarchy in your design.
Click the link to download the Red Hat Display font for free. Then, you can explore the entire font family in more detail.
Red Hat Display – Google Fonts
Developed by Christian Robertson and released by Google in 2012 as a free downloadable font, Roboto is a versatile sans-serif typeface widely used in digital design projects. It features capital letters with straight edges and distinctive race track-shaped rounded letters. The font includes a range of weights, such as thin, light, regular, medium, bold, and black, making it easy to read. Roboto is also part of the Roboto Condensed and Roboto Slab font family. It supports the Latin alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet used in Slavic languages, and even the Greek alphabet, which includes symbols used in mathematics and physics.
To take a closer look at the Roboto font family and its distinctive features, click the link to download it for free.
Created by Paul D. Hunt and released by Adobe in 2012, Source Sans Pro is a geometric sans-serif typeface with a modern, minimalist design featuring a larger x-height and a more humanist italic form. It includes six letter forms: normal, extra-light, light, semi-bold, bold, and black. These letters come in upright and italic styles, making them highly legible. The font supports Latin, Vietnamese, Pinyin Romanization (which enables Chinese characters to be written and read as Latin characters), and “Navajo,” an ancient Native American language spoken in states like New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah in the USA.
You can access this font through the link below to explore its detailed letter forms and compare it with other fonts.
Source Sans Pro – Google Fonts
Designed by Matt McInerney in 2010, Raleway is a unique and elegant sans-serif typeface. It features extended character sets that cover 105 Latin languages and 60 Cyrillic languages. Inspired by geometric sans-serif fonts, Raleway is known for its good readability. It is also suitable for various design projects, including branding and advertising.
You can view this font in the visual and try it out in your texts by clicking the link.
Developed by the ParaType design agency and released in 2009 by Rospechat, a Russian Ministry of Communications department, PT Sans is a versatile sans-serif typeface with a modern, minimalist design. It also includes PT Serif and PT Mono typefaces and supports Latin and Cyrillic characters. PT Sans covers almost all minority languages of the Russian Federation. Thanks to its clarity, PT Sans conveys information easily and directly.
To use the PT Sans font in your projects, click the link to download it for free.
Created by Natanael Gama in 2009, Exo is a unique, futuristic geometric sans-serif typeface with an elegant design. It works exceptionally well as a display font and is also effective for small to medium-sized text, making it a popular choice. Its high legibility makes it suitable for various applications, including branding and advertising. Exo is ideal for creating logos, movies, promotions, books, labels, sci-fi materials, print materials, infographics, and technology poster design projects.
Click the link to download the Exo font for free, and you can explore its letter forms and distinctive character traits.
Developed by Dalton Maag between 2010 and 2011, Ubuntu is a versatile sans-serif typeface with a modern, minimalist design. It is fully compatible with Unicode and includes extended Latin A and B character sets, polytonic Greek, and extended Cyrillic character sets. The font maintains readability at large sizes while offering clear legibility at small sizes. It also supports Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets.
Click the link to explore the Ubuntu font family, which supports many languages, and download it for free.
Created by Erik Spiekermann in 2013 for the Firefox operating system, Fira Sans is a versatile sans-serif typeface with a modern, minimalist design. Its most distinctive features are open spacing and a large x-height. Fira Sans covers the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets, commonly used Latin characters, punctuation marks, and currency symbols. In addition to providing satisfactory readability results, it is suitable for various assignments, invitations, greeting cards, posters, and book cover projects.
Visit the Google Fonts library via the link below to explore the extensive Fira Sans font family more closely and view its distinctive letterforms.
Each of these widely used fonts offers unique features to enhance your design projects in terms of visual appeal and readability. Whether you’re working on a website, brochure, or social media campaign, the fonts in this list are efficient choices for you.