Barlow Semi Condensed

Try Barlow Semi Condensed

Weights and styles

• Thin 100Barlow Semi Condensed Thin Thin Italic
• ExtraLight 200Barlow Semi Condensed ExtraLight ExtraLight Italic
• Light 300Barlow Semi Condensed Light Light Italic
• Regular 400Barlow Semi Condensed Regular Italic
• Medium 500Barlow Semi Condensed Medium Medium Italic
• SemiBold 600Barlow Semi Condensed SemiBold SemiBold Italic
• Bold 700Barlow Semi Condensed Bold Bold Italic
• ExtraBold 800Barlow Semi Condensed ExtraBold ExtraBold Italic
• Black 900Barlow Semi Condensed Black Black Italic

About Barlow Semi Condensed

Barlow Semi Condensed is a grotesk sans serif with low stroke contrast and slightly rounded ends, set a little narrower than normal. It is one of three widths in the Barlow superfamily and sits between Barlow and Barlow Condensed. The specimen shows letters that save space without looking squeezed: the counters of a, e and g stay open, and the figures remain easy to tell apart. Its style comes from everyday Californian lettering such as vehicle plates and road signs. Nine weights run from Thin to Black, each with an italic, for 18 styles in separate static files; the family is not a variable font. Each font contains 680 glyphs covering Latin, Latin Extended and Vietnamese. The project is led by Jeremy Tribby, whose foundry appears in the name table as Tribby Type, and the license is the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Barlow Semi Condensed works

Sidebars, cards and compact UI

The moderate narrowing fits longer labels into fixed-width components while the open counters keep them readable.

Forms and data tables

Regular and Medium save a little width in every cell, which adds up across many columns.

Subheads and captions next to Barlow

The same nine weights exist in all three Barlow widths, so a semi condensed subhead matches the body weight for weight.

Text in narrow columns

On phones and in multi-column layouts the slightly tighter set gets more words per line than the normal width.

Timetables and transit information

The design borrows from road and transport lettering and holds times and stop names in tight rows.

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
• Vietnamese

Character sets found in the files: latin, latin-ext, vietnamese. 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 Barlow Semi Condensed

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 Barlow Semi Condensed 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: "Barlow Semi Condensed";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BarlowSemiCondensed-Black.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 900;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Barlow Semi Condensed";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BarlowSemiCondensed-BlackItalic.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 900;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Barlow Semi Condensed";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BarlowSemiCondensed-Bold.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Barlow Semi Condensed";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BarlowSemiCondensed-BoldItalic.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
/* …and 14 more files in the package, declared the same way */

body {
  font-family: "Barlow Semi Condensed", sans-serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Barlow Semi Condensed 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=Barlow+Semi+Condensed:ital,wght@0,100;0,200;0,300;0,400;0,500;0,600;0,700;0,800;0,900;1,100;1,200;1,300;1,400;1,500;1,600;1,700;1,800;1,900&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Static files only

There are 18 files, one per style, and no variable font in the package.

Shares weights with its siblings

Barlow and Barlow Condensed offer the same Thin to Black range, so widths can be mixed in one layout.

Latin and Vietnamese only

The 680 glyphs cover Latin, Latin Extended and Vietnamese; Cyrillic and Greek are not included.

FAQs

Collections with Barlow Semi Condensed

• Fonts for subtitles and video captions

  Plain, sturdy sans-serif families for subtitles and captions, chosen for clear letters at small sizes and, in most cases, wide language coverage.

• Fonts for signage and wayfinding

  Sans-serif families developed for signs, road lettering and information displays, readable at a distance and at an angle.

• Narrow sans-serif fonts for tables and tight layouts

  Condensed and semi-condensed text families that fit more characters per line in tables, sidebars, forms and mobile screens.

Similar fonts

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