Balsamiq Sans

Try Balsamiq Sans

Weights and styles

• Regular 400Balsamiq Sans Regular Italic
• Bold 700Balsamiq Sans Bold Bold Italic

About Balsamiq Sans

Balsamiq Sans is a handwritten-style typeface with the structure of a sans serif: upright, unconnected letters drawn in a thick line with rounded ends, as if with a marker. The specimen shows a single-storey a, round open bowls and slightly uneven stroke joins, which keep text looking sketched instead of finished. It was created for the Balsamiq Wireframes application and, according to the official description, has been used there since version 2.1. The family has four static styles: Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. The official text gives a lower glyph count than the current files, which hold 1,002 glyphs spanning Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic and Cyrillic Extended along with symbols, dingbats and mathematical and technical signs. Michael Angeles is credited as designer, the font files name Balsamiq SRL as manufacturer, and the license is the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Balsamiq Sans works

Wireframes and low-fidelity mockups

The font was made for a wireframing tool: marker-like letters signal that a screen is a sketch, not a final design.

Flowcharts and whiteboard diagrams

Thick rounded strokes match hand-drawn boxes and arrows, and the symbol and dingbat glyphs supply simple marks.

Workshop slides and sticky-note layouts

Regular and Bold separate a note's title from its text while keeping a handwritten tone.

Learning material for children

Upright letters with a single-storey a resemble the letterforms taught in early handwriting.

Mockups in Cyrillic

Cyrillic and Cyrillic Extended are included, so a Russian or Ukrainian version of a prototype uses the same sketch style.

Glyphs

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Norwegian
• Danish
• Finnish
• Icelandic
• Catalan
• Turkish
• Polish
• Czech
• Slovak
• Hungarian
• Romanian
• Croatian
• Slovenian
• Lithuanian
• Latvian
• Estonian
• Russian
• Ukrainian
• Bulgarian

Writing systems with glyphs in the family besides Latin: Cyrillic. These are listed as scripts, not as a promise for every language written in them.

Character sets found in the files: cyrillic, cyrillic-ext, latin, latin-ext. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

Fonts that pair with Balsamiq Sans

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use Balsamiq Sans on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

@font-face {
  font-family: "Balsamiq Sans";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BalsamiqSans-Bold.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Balsamiq Sans";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BalsamiqSans-BoldItalic.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Balsamiq Sans";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BalsamiqSans-Italic.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Balsamiq Sans";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BalsamiqSans-Regular.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Balsamiq Sans", cursive;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Balsamiq Sans with this markup:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Balsamiq+Sans:ital,wght@0,400;0,700;1,400;1,700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Four static files

Balsamiq Sans is not a variable font. Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic are separate TTF files.

The class is a judgement call

Google Fonts lists Balsamiq Sans under Display, while its official description calls it a handwritten font.

Greek is not covered

The scripts in the files are Latin and Cyrillic. Greek is not among them.

FAQs

Similar fonts

Other families in the same classification, ordered by shared use tags. All handwriting fonts